Candidate Calls Opponent Hypocritical Over Payday Loan Reforms

by Mike Bevel,

CollectionIndustry.com

It?s an election year, and we wave goodbye to reason while beckoning in vitriolic rhetoric.

As we reported earlier this week, Alabama state Senator Lowell Barron is proposing severe restrictions on payday loans.

Critics of the senator point to his past as the former owner of a chain of payday loan operations, perhaps none so loud as the Republican Senate candidate Don Stout. Stout has called it “ridiculous and hypocritical” for state Sen. Lowell Barron to lead a reform effort against payday loan operations when Barron himself owned more than 20 outlets until recently.

Stouts rhetoric takes on a Biblical cast, derisively comparing Barron?s alleged change of heart to the Apostle Paul?s conversion from Jewish tax collector to Christian letter writer: “Since he’s had a Damascus road experience, apparently, I think he ought to return the money he’s taken from them over the years,” Stout has said, also deftly working in a jab at usury.

Barron claims that Stout is simply muddying the Senatorial stream. “My opponent’s entire campaign has been negative personal attacks on me with no plan for what he would do as senator,” Barron said. “My plan to reform the payday loan industry is public, and I am proud that it has been endorsed by newspapers as well as leading consumer advocacy groups in the state.”

Barron?s plan would outlaw so-called rollover loans that can quickly rack up hefty interest charges, ban payday lenders from operating within five miles of a military base, forbid lenders from garnishing any military wages, and prohibit the seizure of personal property on bad loans made by quick-cash outlets. The plan is popular with most voters and political commentators; payday lending operations have been under increased scrutiny as of late.

Stout appears to be angry that Barron, as an incumbent, is capitalizing on the wave of support for his plan ? a plan that Stout sees as hypocritical, given the Senator?s ?sordid? past in the payday lending industry. Stout, too, is now speaking out against payday lending ? offering to support similar legislation that Barron is suggesting. However, Stout would like to see Barron penalized for his past, and Stout is angered by what he sees as do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do law making.

Barron, running for a seventh term, was elected Senate president pro tem by his colleagues in 1999 and has been re-elected every year since.