CENTRE — Alabama House Minority Leader Craig Ford (D-Gadsden) was in town Dec. 14 to speak to a group of retired teachers. Later in the day, Ford stopped by The Post to discuss the current political climate in Alabama.

We asked Ford about several topics, among them Gov. Robert Bentley's recently publicized proposal for the Legislature to transfer millions of dollars from the Education Trust Fund to the General Fund when it meets in early 2012.

“I think that is the worst thing that could ever happen to education,” Ford said. “They’ve got to find a different approach, find money from somewhere else. Once you start touching the education budget it never ends.”

Ford cited several of the Republican-controlled Legislature’s education-related decisions from this year’s regular session as examples of bad politics, including elimination of the DROP program, mandating an increase in retirement contributions for teachers, and “trying to politicize” the retirement board by allowing the governor and speaker of the House to make appointments to the board.

“It’s almost a ‘get even’ approach,” said Ford, who serves as minority leader in the House. “And you don’t ‘get even’ with the working class. I think the Republicans are getting even and they are taking it out on the teachers.”

Ford said it is hard for Democrats to fight back because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature. He said GOP leaders either severely limited or completed muffled any attempts at debate before bills were voted on in 2011.

“We went down to the microphone to try to explain things and try to debate them, and when we stood up and tried to speak they just closed us with procedural motions to shut us up,” Ford said.

Ford said GOP leaders demanded that their party members sign a loyalty pledge, regardless of the costs to the Alabamians they were elected to represent.

“They have to sign that pledge and if they don’t vote the way they are told the can be kicked out of the caucus,” Ford said. “They tell them that they have to listen to one person in the House, Mike Hubbard, and one person in the Senate, Del Marsh. They are putting party over people.”

Ford said the state’s tough new immigration bill is a perfect example of the Republicans acting on impulse without considering any unintended consequences.

“I’m all for doing something about illegal immigration, but I am not for making people stand in the tag line for three hours,” Ford said. “I’m also not for making our education officials become immigration officers, and I’m not for an unfunded mandate asking our sheriff’s deputies and police officers to enforce this law with no additional revenue.”

Ford said his feelings about the need for stronger immigration enforcement led him to vote for the bill despite not knowing what it contained. Now, he said, he intends to work towards fixing the law’s most egregious errors.

“We didn’t know all the problems it had at the time because it was never debated,” Ford said. “They railroaded it through there. I supported it because it sounded good, fighting illegal immigration. Now, I’m going to support the measure to get rid of all those things I just mentioned.”

On top of everything else, Ford said, the immigration law is costing the state money it can’t afford to waste.

“We don’t need to be spending our tax dollars paying [Alabama Attorney General] Luther Strange to defend the law when he’s already told us it needs to be revised,” Ford said. “That money could be better spent in the General Fund, and then we wouldn’t have to draw off the Education Trust Fund to shore up what we are paying to defend unconstitutional laws.”

Ford bristled when asked if the GOP’s constant efforts to stifle all debate in 2011, a procedural process known as cloture, were payback for years of similar tactics by Democrats.

“Absolutely not, because Roger Bedford and I asked a fiscal analyst to go back and look at the Legislature over a 20-year period,” Ford said. “The Democrats have invoked cloture an average of two times per session. Last year, the Republicans used cloture 67 times in the Senate and 40-something times in the House.”

Ford said the GOP’s first cloture motion came after he filibustered an education-related bill for 16 hours.

“Once they realized they could [invoke cloture] they just started sliding everything right through, with no debate,” Ford said. “That’s not what democracy is about. There has to be some give-and-take.”

Ford admitted Democrats in Alabama shoulder a lot of the blame for the direction the state has taken since Republicans took over in Montgomery. Mostly, he said, it is because the Democratic party has lacked a direction of its own for years.

“I think we Democrats have failed not only with our message, but we got complacent,” Ford said. “We were used to all local elections in this state going for Democrats.”

Ford said he, Senate Minority Leader Roger Bedford and Democratic Party Chairman Mark Kennedy, a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, are working on a plan to revitalize the party.

“I think what happened in November 2010 may be best for our party in the long-term,” Ford said. “Now we have revitalized leadership, and we have black Democrats and white Democrats coming together, where before we always used to fight amongst ourselves.”

Ford said the members of his party now feel invigorated and have a renewed sense what it will take to lead in the future.

“We’ve realized that we are made up of all different types of people in our party, whereas the Republican party is made up of one type of person—the white male,” he said. “We’ve realized that we’ve got to put party differences aside and work for Alabamians, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Independents.”

Ford even had a word of thanks for the same GOP lawmakers he had vilified for their strong-armed tactics minutes earlier.

“I think in just one legislative session, the Republicans have reinvented out party and our message for us,” Ford said. “If you can’t see what they are doing to educators and state employees, you’re hiding under a rock.”

Ford said another outcome of the GOP’s performance in Montgomery is a better educated electorate regarding the difference between state and national politics.

“The Republicans have awakened a sleeping giant—common Alabamians—and they are upset, they’re mad,” Ford said. “I’m not happy with President Obama’s fiscal policies either, and people are finally beginning to realize that federal is an entirely different story from what happens in the state of Alabama.”

Ford said he is considering a run for higher office in the next state election cycle but hasn’t made up his mind about any specifics. He is considering a run for governor or, possibly, the District 10 state Senate seat currently held by Gadsden Republican Phil Williams.

“Sen. Williams is beatable because he can’t hide from his record,” Ford said. “He keeps trying to hide from his voting record, and I say you ought to be proud of your voting record.”

Ford said for a Democrat to win the gubernatorial race, he or she would have to be pro-business and pro-gun. Ford admitted the dual requirement would be a mixed bag for him.