Ann Bedsole, 1st woman to serve in Alabama Senate, dies at 95

Ann Bedsole, the first woman elected to the Alabama Senate and the first Republican woman elected to the Alabama House of Representatives, has died. She was 95 years old.

The Alabama Republican Party announced Bedsole’s death Tuesday. A cause of death was not immediately available.

“Ann Bedsole opened doors that had never been opened for women in Alabama politics,” Joan Reynolds, the vice chairwoman of the Alabama Republican Party, said in a statement. “She broke barriers with grace, courage, and conviction, and she did it at a time when few women were ever given the opportunity.”

Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, said in a statement Tuesday that Bedsole was “a woman of many firsts.”

“All who served with her say she was a larger than life personality who made the Legislature better with her simple presence,” the statement said. “Sen. Bedsole packed many adventures into her 95 years, and I join countless Republicans across the state in keeping her family in our prayers.”

A list of survivors was not immediately available Tuesday.

Bedsole served for 16 years in the Alabama Legislature, including one term in the House and three in the Senate. A cattle farmer and timberland owner, she had been active in Republican Party politics in Mobile and broader civic activities, particularly historic preservation.  That work, Bedsole said, helped her understand the importance of politics.

“When you work real hard to get something accomplished that’s right for the community, you always come back to the fact it happens in Montgomery or Washington,” he said.

Bedsole ran for the Alabama House of Representatives in 1978 as a Republican in a district in west Mobile County, after the previous occupant, Sonny Callahan – later a congressman –- ran for a Senate seat. Bedsole told The Birmingham News in 1992 that she waited for her eldest child to enter senior year of high school before running.

“It’s a hard job, and very time-consuming,” she said. “So it makes it extremely difficult for someone trying to do a good job of raising children to serve in the Legislature. It doesn’t seem to bother men, but men aren’t the care-givers, and that’s one of the differences.”

After winning election, Bedsole was one of only three women — and one of only four Republicans — serving in the House. She later said that the women “had a hard time being taken seriously.”

“We weren’t mistreated or anything like that,” she said. “The House leadership gave us the opportunity to be effective and do a good job. But they looked with a jaundiced eye for a year to see if the women could handle it.”

The representative served on the education budget committee during her time in the House. When Callahan left his Senate seat in 1982, Bedsole won election to the chamber, where she served from 1983 to 1994.

During her time, Bedsole sponsored legislation that established the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science in Mobile in 1989. Bedsole, who enjoyed backing from business interests, voted to limit damage awards from liability lawsuits and voted against an education reform package in 1992 amid concerns its tax burdens would fall hardest on middle-class households. She also supported teacher tenure laws.

The senator also broadly supported abortion rights, though she approved parental consent laws. Bedsole also campaigned for years to ban PAC-to-PAC transfers, a way of concealing the identity of donors to a campaign. The Legislature did not ban the practice until 2010.

Bedsole often lamented the absence of women in the 140-member Alabama Legislature. “Women’s views are not heard in the Legislature when there are only eight women in the whole thing,” she told the Birmingham News in 1992.

Bedsole ran for governor in 1994. During the campaign, she called for a repeal of the grocery tax, a constitutional convention, judicial reform and stronger ethics laws. Bedsole had hoped that business support would help her in her campaign against former Gov. Fob James — who entered the Republican primary hours before qualifying — but many cast their ballots in what became a fierce battle for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor between former Attorney General Don Siegelman and Sen. Ryan deGraffenreid.

James won the nomination and narrowly defeated Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., a Democrat, in the general election that year.

“I guess it proves you can’t do it in Alabama without help from special interests,” Bedsole said after the loss.

After losing the election, Bedsole focused on business and philanthropy, and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Mobile in 2005.

Outside the Legislature, Bedsole was an active gardener and scuba diver.

“The water’s cold when you first go in and I think ‘Ahh, I don’t think I can do this,’” she told the Birmingham News in 1994. “And then I put the mask on, stick the regulator in my mouth and look down and I cannot wait to get down. It’s just a wonderful, gorgeous new world.”

Asked if she had the same feeling in the Senate, Bedsole said “it’s sort of an opposite feeling, not quite as peaceful.”