Joseph Siegelman, son ofAlabama Governor Siegelman (convicted in one of the nation's most notorious political prosecutions in recent American history,) last week Joseph Siegelman announced his candidacy to become their state's next attorney general.

The young Democratic attorney faces many obstacles in the deep Red state before emulating his father — former Gov. Don Siegelman, now 71 and recovering from emergency open heart surgery Feb. 9 — in winning their state's top elective law enforcement post. The elder Siegelman, ----, was Alabama attorney general for a term in the late 1980s before election as lieutenant governor for two terms.

Don Siegelman won election as governor in 1998, serving a term from 1999 to 2003 while undergoing non-stop attack from Republican prosecutors beginning with his first months in office. His conviction and imprisonment on what independent investigators but not courts have shown to have been trumped up corruption charges resulted in his imprisonment and the devastation of the Alabama Democratic Party. Among other results , the prosecution thwarted both his re-election and plan to run for the presidency.

His son, managing partner of a Cochran Law Firm office in Birminghan, faces a long shot but highly dramatic and nationally important race to overcome a Democratic opponent in a June primary and, in November, the winner of a four-person Republican primary.


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