Albert Preston Brewer (October 26, 1928 – January 2, 2017) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician who served as the 47th governor of Alabama from 1968 to 1971. He previously served as the lieutenant governor of Alabama, the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, and as an Alabama state representative representing Morgan County from 1955 to 1967.
Early life
Albert Preston Brewer was born on October 26, 1928, in Bethel Springs, Tennessee, United States, to Daniel A. Brewer, a farmer, and Clara Albert Brewer. While Albert was a child, the family moved to Decatur so his father could take a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Brewer stayed there and attended Lafayette Street School, Decatur Jr. High School, and Decatur High School, until he left for the University of Alabama in 1946 to study history and political science. He earned his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1952 and returned to Decatur to practice law. From 1956 to 1963 he served as Chairman of the Decatur Planning Commission, and in 1963 he was selected as Decatur's “Outstanding Young Man of the Year” and was selected by the Alabama Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of the four “Outstanding Young Men in Alabama.”
Brewer married Martha Helen Farmer in 1950 and had two children, Rebecca Anne and Beverly Allison. He was a Baptist.
Legislative career
House of Representatives In 1953, Brewer chaired the "Young Democrats" chapter for Alabama's 8th congressional district. In 1954, the incumbent legislator serving Morgan County in the Alabama House of Representatives announced his retirement. Local community leaders recruited Brewer to run. He won the Democratic primary and, facing no opposition in the general election, was seated the following year. He was reelected in 1958 and 1962.
With the support of Governor-elect George Wallace, he was elected State House speaker at the opening of the 1963 legislative session on January 8 without opposition. The speakership also made him ex officio chairman of the House Rules Committee. Under Brewer's leadership, the House was generally supportive of Wallace's goals. During the session, a bill to increase education spending, coupled with new tax increases, was introduced and passed through the legislature. Brewer, wary of Wallace's campaign promises to block tax increases, met with the governor to ask when he would veto the bill and send it back to the legislature. Wallace stated that he did not intend to veto the bill to preserve his campaign pledge, instead saying that he would "just yell nigger" to avoid scrutiny. After this, Brewer began to have doubts about Wallace's merits.
In 1964, Brewer and the future U.S. Senator James B. Allen, then the lieutenant governor, were among the unpledged presidential electors on the Alabama ballot. They lost to the Republican slate committed to Barry Goldwater. No electors pledged to President Lyndon B. Johnson were permitted on the Alabama ballot. While national Democrats balked over Johnson's exclusion, most supported the unpledged slate, which competed directly with the Republican electors. As The Tuscaloosa News explained, loyalist electors would have offered a clearer choice to voters than did the unpledged slate.The Tuscaloosa News, reprinted in The Birmingham News, September 5, 1964
Lieutenant governor In 1966 Brewer considered running for the office of governor, as incumbent governor George Wallace was constitutionally restricted from seeking another term. The governor's wife, Lurleen Wallace, entered the race and Brewer, convinced a gubernatorial candidacy would be futile, decided to run for the office of lieutenant governor. With a coalition of Wallace supporters, organized labor, and urbanites, he overwhelmingly defeated his opponent in the Democratic primary and faced no opposition in the general election. He was sworn in on January 16, 1967. Lurleen Wallace also won and was inaugurated that month. As lieutenant governor, he convinced the legislature to create an Education Study Commission.
In early July 1967 Lurleen Wallace traveled to Texas for cancer treatment. State law stipulated that if the governor was out of state for 21 days, the lieutenant governor officially assumed their responsibilities as acting governor. This went into effect at the beginning of July 24, and Brewer served as acting governor for about 15 hours, meeting with some state officials, signing extradition papers, and appointing 25 honorary colonels, before Wallace was flown back to Alabama.
Governor Executive action
Though aware of Lurleen Wallace's affliction with cancer, Brewer was not familiar with the severity of her condition until shortly before she died. Wallace succumbed on May 7, 1968, and, as stipulated in the constitution, Brewer succeeded to the office of governor. Taking the oath before only his family and George Wallace, Brewer remained very guarded about his feelings and views early in his new tenure, and delayed moving into the governor's mansion until Wallace had found a new home for his family. Wallace's erstwhile legal counsel, Cecil Jackson, directed all executive cabinet members to offer their resignations to Brewer to allow him to build a team of his choosing. Brewer ended up retaining most of the cabinet, though he fired the public safety director and the director of the Department of Conservation after they refused to offer their resignations (and after the latter became involved in a physical altercation with another state employee).
Fairly soon after taking office, Brewer and his new state finance director, Bob Ingram, uncovered the large extent to which the Wallace administration had favored supporters in conducting state business, including alleged kickbacks for road construction contracts and asking state troopers to funnel stranded motorists to preferred tow truck services. Brewer was personally bothered by these improprieties but, wanting to seek election to his own gubernatorial term in 1970, felt it would be unwise to anger Wallace supporters by publicly exposing and denouncing these practices. As part of their attempt to quietly reform the executive branch, Brewer and Ingram tapped experienced public servants who they viewed as ethical, such as Tom Brassell, who was made assistant finance director. Despite this commitment to reform, he sometimes intervened in hiring and other state business to assist friends and dole out favors. On the whole, politicization in Brewer's administration was more muted than his predecessors', and civil servant morale improved during his tenure.
Unlike his two predecessors, Brewer held weekly press conferences. At one such meeting in June 1968, Brewer called for the establishment of a state motor pool, saying he would create one by executive order and then ask for the legislature to affirm it. The motor pool system, which he hoped would limit inappropriate use of state vehicles for personal purposes, required all vehicles to be checked out and all fuel to be purchased from the state. He also had state insignia prominently affixed to all motor pool vehicles to increase their visibility as government property. All vehicles deemed unnecessary—totaling about 1,000—were requisitioned from various agencies and listed for sale, including the governor's limousine. In the end, the reforms only generated minor cost savings for the government. He also had excess copy machines sold, consolidated the state's computer systems, eliminated 12 senior assistant positions, and dispatched various staff the Wallaces' had loaned to the governor's office back to their agencies of origin to handle their official competencies.
George Wallace was critical of some of the reforms, particularly the motor pool, complaining that they reflected a de facto rebuke of his late wife. While originally cautious about besmirching the Wallaces, the complaints annoyed Brewer and led him to abandon his earlier concerns. The governor also initiated an investigation into commissions collections by agents of the Alcohol Beverage Control Board. While the practice had been de jure eliminated by law in 1963 supported by both Wallace and Brewer, many board agents were purportedly collecting commissions on distillery sales without authorization during the Wallaces' tenures. George Wallace denied any knowledge of the impropriety and Brewer affirmed his innocence, but Wallace still criticized Brewer for the publicity the scandal received.
Brewer also took actions in accordance with his own socially conservative views which were popular among most Alabamians. After being informed by his wife that pornographic movies were being displayed in Bessemer, he authorized a series of state raids on theatres. He also initiated crackdowns on alcohol and narcotics abuse. Following a series of influence peddling scandals in the legislature, Brewer issued an executive order creating an ethics commission tasked with drafting a code of ethics for potential adoption by the legislature. Among his suggested points were the prohibition of gifts for officials, a ban on officials working for and receiving compensation from entities they regulated, and establishing conflict of interest disclosure rules. He offered funds from his office budget to support the commission's work.
To promote economic development, Brewer pursued industrial recruitment, traveling to New York to speak with corporate executives and hosting various in-person meetings with company representatives. He created the Alabama Program Development Office to link federal grant applications with local government's development efforts. Following a series of major fish kills on state rivers caused by dumping of chemicals, Brewer encouraged the state to take action against Geigy Chemical Company and create new anti-pollution laws.
Legislative action In legislative and policy disputes, Brewer preferred negotiation and finding common ground rather than public spats or power plays with patronage, as George Wallace had. In anticipation of the first legislative session being convened while he was governor, he decided to focus on improving education, consolidating bureaucratic procedures, trimming unnecessary spending, and improving Alabama's national image. He investigated the state of education in Alabama, and found that overall the system was not improving relative to other states, despite efforts at reform during the Wallace administrations. He informed state education officials that he wanted to alter the state's strategy for responding to federal school desegregation orders; in contrast to Wallace's flagrant hostility and refusals, Brewer would "try to do it in a way that will let us do the most palatable thing for the people, the patrons of our system."