Ethics Probes Plague Alabama Governor : Grand jury: Inquiries of his use of state jet and campaign funds hurt the unpopular Republican and state’s dormant GOP.

The question being debated in Alabama’s news media these days is whether the governor is a crook or just plain dumb.

“Dumb, at least,” was the answer proffered by the editorial page of the Birmingham News recently, while a columnist for the same paper asked whether “desperate” should also be added.

Gov. Guy Hunt is being investigated by a grand jury for possible ethics violations. But the public posing of such a question in itself indicates another problem, apart from the grand jury inquiry: How can the unconventional 59-year-old governor, with two years to go in his second term, lead effectively if he has become the object of widespread ridicule and scorn?

Some say the ethics questions, which have dogged him for more than a year, threaten to cripple the Republican governor and stunt the re-emergence of Alabama’s long-dormant GOP.

For his part, Hunt, a Primitive Baptist lay preacher, insists that he has done nothing wrong.

Yes, he flew a state plane to church meetings where he received “love offerings” for preaching, he admits. But he gave the nearly $10,000 he received to the state after questions were raised. He also contends every other governor has had free, unquestioned use of the state plane. The rules have been rewritten, he argues, because he is a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

Yes, he admits, he accepted $10,000 from a Montgomery businessman and never reported it. But it was a personal gift--not a campaign donation--and his accountant told him reporting it was not necessary.

And, yes, he did appoint that same businessman to a seat on the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission soon after receiving the money. But there is no connection, he contends. The businessman, Don Martin, is now under indictment in connection with a $29-million savings and loan fraud.

Hunt and his aides maintain that the state’s Democratic attorney general has conspired with prominent Democratic and Republican leaders to discredit the governor and drive him from office. An aide is said to have witnessed the meeting at a Montgomery pizzeria last year at which the plot was hatched.

“Unmitigated poppycock,” Atty. Gen. Jimmy Evans retorts.

When Hunt, a former probate judge and Amway salesman, was first elected to office in 1986 he became Alabama’s first Republican governor in 118 years. Now, because of the controversies surrounding him, some speculate he might also be the last for a while.

Hunt’s camp maintains that prominent Republicans are as much out to get him as Democrats.

“Guy Hunt is not one of them,” Terry Abbott, the governor’s press secretary, said of the state’s GOP. “The governor was not elected with their support and he was not reelected with it.”

Many thought Hunt’s election in 1986 was a fluke. He had, after all, won only 26% of the vote when he ran eight years earlier.

He won, without much support from the Republican Party leadership, largely because of disarray in the Democratic Party. The Democratic candidate was stripped of the nomination and replaced because of allegations he had illegally encouraged Republican primary voters to vote in the Democratic runoff. The issue was not resolved until two weeks before the election.

But Hunt won again in 1990, his folksy image and pro-business policies appealing to conservative Democrats as well as well-heeled Republicans. But with Republicans making up only about a quarter of the state Legislature, he has often been at odds with lawmakers and unable to get his measures passed. His political troubles have intensified since the scandals.

His poll ratings have steadily deteriorated over the last year, since news stories about the plane trips first appeared. A poll published Monday in the Birmingham News found that only 38.4% of respondents considered him “honest” and 41% thought of him as “trustworthy.”

The Alabama Ethics Commission ruled last year, after examining Hunt’s use of the state airplane, that he may have violated state laws by using his public office for personal gain. It forwarded the case to the attorney general.

Hunt filed suit in U.S. District Court contending the ethics law does not apply to him because that would be a violation of the separation of powers defined in the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Wednesday upheld a lower court’s ruling rejecting Hunt’s argument.

The grand jury investigation has gone beyond the preaching trips to examine other aspects of Hunt’s finances. In a related court hearing Tuesday, Evans said Hunt had paid off large amounts of personal and campaign debt since becoming governor and yet had not reported any corresponding rise in income.

He said the grand jury subpoenaed more than 200 banks across the state--including 20 chartered after Hunt took office and one started by his aides in 1987--asking each to turn over any records for Hunt, his wife, Helen, his campaigns and three of his four children to find out if Hunt had deposited any campaign funds in their accounts for personal use.