This is an opinion column.

That wasn’t a whipping, it was a whupping.

It was a Bham beating, a chitty chitty bang bang.

I didn’t see it coming. Not like that. Asked last week to handicap the Birmingham mayor’s race, I followed my gut and said, “Randall Woodfin without a runoff.”

Then the absurdity of that statement began to eat at me.

A three-term mayor in a city with a reputation for violence and a declining population? A mayor in a city with traffic lights synced to the rhythm of “Why Stop Now?” In an eight-person race featuring a sitting county commissioner and a state lawmaker?

An outright win would be … unlikely.

I let the sound and the fury and the Llama-and-coffin-infused protests get to me. Surely time, noise, electoral boredom and the big personalities of Commissioner LaShu

See Full Page