Local Legislators facing opposition as qualifying deadline nears

Anniston Attorney Taylor Stewart has has qualified for the District 12 seat in the Alabama State Senate, challenging incumbent and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston.  The 43 year old Stewart, qualified this week to run for the seat as a Democrat.  Qualifying to run in the 2014 elections ends today for both Democrats and Republicans.  Stewart, an Anniston High School and Jacksonville State University graduate, earned his law degree at Birmingham School of Law. Since 2006, he has practiced in the law firm run by his father, former U.S. Sen. Donald Stewart. The younger Stewart worked with the firm as a clerk when it pursued and won a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto for the PCB contamination that affected much of western Anniston.  Marsh, a member of the Senate since 1998, has become one of the most powerful figures in the Legislature since the Republicans won a supermajority in 2010. He is perhaps best known as the architect of the Alabama Accountability Act, a law that created a tax credit for parents who pull their children out of the state's lowest-performing schools.

Stewart said he is just beginning fundraising for the race. Marsh, on the other hand, had $201,000 at the beginning of February, according to campaign finance reports.