Full Text of the Excerpt

JACK BASS:

What is your own background? Are you a native of Mobile?

BERT NETTLES:

No, I was born in Monroeville. Did you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? That was my home town. It's about 90 miles north of Mobile between here and Montgomery. It's a small county seat town. I lived there. Born and raised there. Then I went to Alabama for undergraduate and law school. University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Then I went with the attorney general's office for a year. With Macdonald [unclear] who was then attorney general for the state. That was in '60. Came down here in '61 with a law firm. Then was elected to the . . . . Was not active in politics at all until '66 when I ran against Pierre Pelham as the Republican nominee. Pierre was . . . one of these wild sort of things. Republicans thought after '64 we could pretty well elect people without any difficulty, that this had become a Republican area. Of course, we immediately became aware of the fact that '64 was a one time shot and no Republicans were elected in '66 other than Jack Edwards as Congressman, who had entrenched himself in two years time and was re-elected. But Pierre and I had a good race. I raised one or two issues that got my name known. The [unclear] control board here is a problem. State milk pricing. Big racket in Alabama. And our race was closer than any of the other 12 legislative races. Then I became active in the Republican party after that time. Was elected to the county committee. In 1968 I served as chairman of the state Republican convention. Then in '69 there was a special election which was ideally suited for a Republican winning county wide office. We had two vacancies. One member of the house was named to county commission and another to the judgeship. And I ran for one of the two vacant spots and was elected, overwhelmingly. I was fortunate in [unclear] running against me. One had been a Wallaceite and a black. And I got about 53% of the vote. We had a very large turn out for a special election. Was re-elected in '70 for a full term. One other Republican was elected in '70. At the time of the special election I was the only Republican in the state legislature.