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Steve Flowers spoke to the Troy Exchange Club on Thursday.  Flowers gave an entertaining 30-minute talk that touched on past local and statewide political figures, power-brokers of years past, our current local representatives and their upcoming races and finally the presidential election that’s around the corner.  During his talk he even took those in attendance back to when some of the most influential people in Troy lived on Orange Street.  Lastly, he bet this writer a hot dog that Donald Trump will win against Kamala Harris in the presidential race that’s around the corner.

Flowers opened with a humorous story of how Orange St resident and former state representative Gardner Bassett helped get Flowers political career going.  Flowers recounted how Bassett would drive him up to Montgomery when he was little boy to work as Bassett’s page.  Flowers recounted one of those trips to Montgomery with Bassett.  “One day I’m carrying my papers for my Messenger paper route and I go by Mr. Gardner’s house.  He said hurry up with your paper route, we got to go to Montgomery. I quickly finished the route and we got in his Chrysler New Yorker, which was a big ole nice car back then.  Hwy 231 was a two-lane road back then and Mr. Gardner would take off in that New Yorker and drive it 75 miles per hour up that two-lane road and I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not.  We passed the only trooper assigned to Pike County, Curly Long. Curly just waved at Mr. Gardener and me and Mr. Gardner waved back.  The speed limit was 55 miles per hour. I said Mr. Gardner you just passed Curly Long going too fast, why didn’t he stop you? Gardner said, cause I got him his job!”

Switching to national politics, Flowers thinks the presidential race is going to be very close.  He stated, “I’ve never seen a 60-day window where things have changed so much in national politics.  You can go back 60-days and ole Biden was stumbling around and didn’t know where he was and obviously he wasn’t going to win and Trump’s flying high as a kite, doing well not acting crazy like he does sometimes. Then all of a sudden Trump gets shot, Biden drops out and Kamala Harris is the democratic nominee to be.  So, that race is going to be close in the fall.”

Flowers stated he feels like the election is going to come down to Wisconsin and Michigan and that Trump’s selection of JD Vance will help him in those states.

Flowers talked about how Trump’s campaign is attempting to keep him more disciplined, “They’re also keeping him a little more disciplined. He can’t go off on this left wing and attack Harris personally.  He’s got to stick to the issues and say that she’s a left-wing San Francisco liberal and don’t get into personal assaults on social media.  He can’t do that, like he’s used to doing.  He can lose this race by going overboard.”

On the local level he commented on the Alabama congressional District 2 race.  Flowers also feels like the District 2 race will be a close, but he really liked the campaign Caroleene Dobson is running.  Flowers ended by saying the District 2 race will be impacted by the presidential race, “I would say that race is going to be effected by the presidential race and it’s going to be an uphill battle for the Republican candidate but, I got to tell you that I have not met a young candidate that I like as much as Caroleene Dobson.  The young lady is doing it for the right reasons.  She’s been here and she knows this county.  She would make a good choice.”