COLUMN: The Last Temptation Of John Merrill

*This is an opinion column*

TUSCALOOSA, AL — As I made my way up the stairs in the old YMCA building in downtown Tuscaloosa, I wasn't sure what to expect. It was late in the summer of 2009 and I was on my first-ever reporting assignment on behalf of the now-defunct Shelton State Courier newspaper.

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My subject was the spokesperson for the Tuscaloosa County School System — a tall, thin-framed man with a wide smile and key grip named John Merrill. He had just thrown his name into a race for the Alabama House of Representatives, so I was sent to cover his stump appearance at the YMCA Men's Club. He had previously run for the seat as a Democrat and lost in 2002, before defecting to the GOP. At the time, he was still virtually unknown at the state level.

I had never written a news story, conducted an interview or even talked to a politician at that point. So, in my naivety, I hung on to every word Merrill said. He was affable, avoided grandstanding and seemed to have a keen ear when listening to the needs and desires of others.

What little I did know about the man at the time was positive.

It honestly resonated with me that he had been the first independent candidate not affiliated with "The Machine" to be elected as SGA president at the University of Alabama. He spoke openly about working across the aisle and, in hindsight, seemed to stand out as a pretty accurate embodiment of the direction being taken by the Alabama GOP in the days before the tidal shift to conservative populism brought by Donald Trump.

Being the tambourine-shaking hippie that I was, my benign and little-read story ended up focusing on Merrill's talking points that played to my selfish interests, like reform to alcohol laws and medical marijuana. I'm sure my Mama still has a copy of it in a box somewhere.

I’ll never forget reading the words "Teetotaler John Merrill" in the headline of my very first news story — a term I had to look up in a dictionary. The headline was crafted by my first journalism mentor and editor, who couldn't help but work the word "Teetotaler" onto the top fold of the paper.

Merrill would go on to win the Republican Primary in landslide fashion against longtime County Commissioner Jerry Tingle and won by an even wider margin in the subsequent General Election. After a term in the legislature, he set his sights on the Alabama Secretary of State's Office.

In 2014, it would be his bid for that statewide position that I would be assigned to follow during my brief stint at the Anniston Star — far and away the best political newspaper in Alabama. After the unofficial results came in, Merrill answered my call on the first ring and I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited for him. After all, who doesn't love a "Local Boy Makes Good" story?

It was a warm moment and one where I felt privileged to cover the latest victory in what appeared to be a meteoric ascent. John Merrill had the electorate in the palm of his hand that warm summer night and, from my vantage point, seemed destined to be the next big thing in Alabama politics.

But let's skip ahead to Nov. 30, 2021.

Following a tumultuous year for the embattled 58-year-old Republican, Merrill — ever the name-dropper if you follow him on social media — recently paid a visit to former President Donald Trump at his gilded Mar-a-Lago stronghold in Palm Beach, Florida.

Merrill said he discussed Alabama football with the former president, along with "election integrity, transparency, and accountability." The current Alabama Secretary of State made no secret about the two collaborating on an upcoming "project," the details of which are expected to be revealed in the coming months.

It's unclear what, if anything, this meeting will produce. But, it seems we are more likely to see certain election reforms proposed in the eleventh hour of Merrill's term as opposed to another attempt at elected office. At the same time, the tactic employed by Trump could serve as a microcosm of the backroom deals his camp is working on with local officials in conservative states across the country, while also providing insight into Merrill's own intentions.

What's most important to point out, though, is that this meeting came less than a year after what could be viewed as the biggest gaffe in Merrill's deeply-scarred political career to date — the unsettling details of which are still fresh in the minds of many.

The Big Lie

I admit, I didn't think much at first when I saw a blog post about Merrill's infidelities shared from a sensational far-right website in April that made no attempt to hide its support for Republican Congressman and Senate candidate Mo Brooks.

Merrill, who was expected to announce his bid for U.S. Senate ahead of Brooks' anticipated run, even then possessed a reputation for sexual escapades that had become the stuff of around-town gossip. But until this past April, the man's reputation appeared to be coated in Teflon.

Indeed, in 2010, as he ran for the Alabama House of Representatives, Merrill would get his first taste of public embarrassment when a divorce filing for a TCSS teacher mentioned Merrill —a married father who was employed by TCSS at the time — as one of her extramarital lovers. The scandal no doubt found its way into dinner table conversations across Tuscaloosa for years to come, but would prove to have little, if any, discernible effect on Merrill's political ambitions or his undeniable popularity among voters.

So, it became that much more surprising when the lurid details of his most recent affair with a female legal assistant surfaced, complete with nausea-inducing subject matter that I still refuse to print, for fear my Maw Maw would read it and faint.

A pious holy-roller in the daytime, Merrill vehemently denied the allegations made against him when I first reached out to give him the opportunity to defend his reputation.

In a lengthy, 526-word written statement, he railed against the "Fake News Media," before telling me that he had been stalked, harassed and made the victim of a political hatchet job.

And while the recordings and text messages would quickly refute just about every word he said, the entire thing did indeed reek of his political rivals, Republican Congressman Mo Brooks and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore — two of the most morally- and politically-bankrupt figures in all of Alabama.

AL.com investigative reporter Connor Sheets, speaking to the woman involved in the extramarital affair, published her claims that Moore, a former Republican U.S. Senate candidate, was responsible for exposing Merrill's infidelities as retaliation for the Secretary of State certifying Moore's election loss to Democrat Doug Jones. Moore disputed the results of the election, attributing his loss to voter fraud and failed to find an ally in Merrill — an establishment darling when stacked up against Moore's fringe platform and antagonist track record.

It's also worth pointing out that, while on the campaign trail in 2017, Moore found did find a friend in Brooks, who was one of the few Republicans to publicly defend the embattled former judge when he was faced with accusations of sexual assault on a 16-year-old girl in 1977.

Regardless of the source of the affair story or whether the Moore and Brooks were in cahoots, it was less than 24 hours after I published my article that the recordings and text messages confirming Merrill's affair were made public. When I saw the story by Connor Sheets that deconstructed the lie, I immediately saw red. I'm a staunch practitioner of fair treatment for sources, regardless of my own political bias, and have forged a successful career doing so. It's not to say I had never been lied to by a source before that moment, but this one hit home.

I felt sick. Up to that point, I had never experienced such professional embarrassment. I had done everything right, provided a longtime source the chance to respond to serious allegations, only to have my trust taken advantage of by someone who didn't have the foresight to think about any hard evidence floating around that could expose him.

Merrill appears undeterred today, though, despite the recent controversy prompting him to withdraw his name from the race to fill the seat that will soon be vacated by U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby. He maintains a visible presence on social media and can still be seen making his regular rounds on talk radio and television news. When it comes to keeping up appearances, he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Most recently, he spoke to my friends on the Steve & DC Show in Tuscaloosa about his visit to Mar-a-Lago and it was as if the numerous controversies had never happened. I don't blame the morning show personalities in the least for keeping the tone of the interview positive and not blindsiding him with "gotcha" questions during drive-time. But to those unaware of the history or scandals, it would be easy to come away under the impression that Merrill won't be going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of his place in elected office.

Sounding like a man who just got back from a vacation, Merrill's voice beamed over the radio airwaves as he recounted the hour-and-a-half-long meeting with the twice-impeached 45th president.

"We are working on a project together and he invited me to Mar-a-Lago and I was able to take a couple members of my team to go down there to make sure we're covering our bases and doing everything we needed to do," Merrill told the Steve & DC Show earlier this week.

"Hopefully, after the first of the year, before the first quarter is well underway, we will be able to have a public announcement about [Trump's] involvement with [the State of Alabama]," Merrill added during the radio interview. "He's so very excited and encouraged about what we're doing."

Apart from a warm welcome into the MAGA fold, colleagues in the Alabama Republican Party seem far less optimistic of Merrill's prospects once his term ends in 2023. This makes me think back to the Trump rally in Cullman in August, when I had to ask a Republican elected official and friend — who I won't name — to make sure they stayed between me and Merrill in the event he came over to talk to us in the VIP section.

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I've since made my peace with the whole thing, but at the time I was still seething from our last encounter in April and was vocal about it even in the exclusively-Republican meet-and-greet prior to the rally.

Funny enough, no one within earshot disagreed with me.

While the air was thick and muggy on that rainy, late summer day, Merrill's standard-issue Republican suit was spotless and his white smile gleamed brighter than just about anything else around him. He still very much looked the part less than six months removed from his recent scandal. But to the trained ear listening to those around me, his status as a pariah was more than obvious within both the moderate and radical wings of his party.

"Eh — don't worry about him," I vividly recall one official saying after intently nodding along with my rant. "He's just trying to save face ... He's done."

Indeed, I saw several Republican heavy-hitters scrunch up their faces as he made his way through the crowd. But he did share laughs with one guest of honor — Mike Lindell, the former crack cocaine addict who cleaned up and made a fortune as the founder and CEO of MyPillow.

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that Lindell had recently been de-platformed for spreading outrageous and baseless conspiracy theories concerning the results of the 2020 presidential election. So, naturally, it threw up red flags when my own eyes witnessed the state's chief elections officer holding court with a man who once likened voting machine companies to a "mafia crime family."

AL.com's William Thornton wrote in October when Lindell asserted, without providing any evidence whatsoever, that 100,000 votes for Donald Trump in Alabama were changed in favor of Joe Biden ... “every single county was affected.”

It shouldn't be a surprise that Lindell's claims of voter machine manipulation in Alabama conveniently fail to acknowledge that Trump won the state by a staggering 28-point margin. What's more, the platitudes spouted by the conservative firebrand stand in sharp contrast to Merrill's widely-publicized confidence in Alabama's election integrity ... not to mention Lindell's own conflicting claims that the Yellowhammer State is one of the most secure when it comes to elections.

Merrill has indeed distanced himself from some of Lindell's more outlandish conspiracy theories, but for a political outcast with little to lose and even less hope of a future in office after his term expires, there's no way to tell with any kind of certainty what Merrill might be willing to do to curry favor with the last remaining people in his corner.

WHAT'S NEXT?

So what do those broken and exposed politicians with an insatiable hunger for attention do to salvage what's left of their careers? They run like hell for the idealogical fringes, where they are welcomed with open arms.

Enter Donald Trump — a man who makes sport out of identifying and using up the last ounce of credibility held by desperate and corrupt public figures like Merrill, Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, Mo Brooks and others.

The common thread uniting these names is pretty easy to spot. Simply put, when they each became too politically-radioactive for establishment types and moderates to openly associate with, they laid their reputations on the altar of a man who they know full-well will crush them the second they outlive their usefulness.

Just ask Jeff Sessions what it feels like to scrape one's flattened political career off of the pavement.

Despite being exiled by the electorate, and practically barred from every major social media platform, Trump has been busy meeting with Republican state and local officials, according to Merrill, as he no doubt is gearing up for another run at the White House in 2024.

It's no secret that loyalty is what matters most to Trump. And Merrill, in my humble and novice opinion, represents the ideal mark for the former president to take advantage of while he is still in power as Alabama's chief elections official.

Merrill — or his political career, anyways — needs Trump much more than Trump will ever need him. I think our Secretary of State not only knows this, but is consciously opting to go all-in for the only political figure left who's willing to give him the time of day.

It didn't have to be this way, obviously. But instead of gracefully bowing out of politics to preserve any remaining dignity, Merrill could very well be negotiating a deal for his soul in a last-ditch grab at political relevance.

For Alabama's sake, let's hope I'm wrong. But until that day and with precedence as my guide, it will be impossible for me to ever trust Merrill like I did when I first met him at the Tuscaloosa YMCA more than a decade ago.

Ryan Phillips is the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The views expressed in this opinion column are his and do not necessarily represent the viewpoints held by our parent company.