Mike Dow

Dow was born in South Carolina and was raised as a foster child. He had a troubled childhood. His father left his family when he was ten and his mother suffered from mental illness. As a consequence, Mike became a ward of the state. Later, at about the age of 14, he was taken in by his maternal grandfather, Henry Gainous.

Dow joined the U.S. Army, serving as a paratrooper in his first tour of duty and as a door gunner for subsequent tours in Vietnam. He survived several helicopter crashes but, in his fourth flight, his pilot and best friend, Johnny Legg, was killed. Dow was following his friend in another helicopter at the time of the incident. After Legg's death, Dow decided to leave the military. He still keeps a rubbing of Mr. Legg's name from the Vietnam memorial in his office.

After leaving Vietnam and the military, Dow returned to college, earning a master's degree in accounting from the University of South Alabama.

In 1979, Dow co-founded QMS (Quality Micro Systems) with his brother-in-law, Jim Busby. Dow took on a variety of roles, serving as Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Accounting for the company. Quality Micro Systems, a printer manufacturing company, at one time competed with giants like Hewlett Packard, Canon, Xerox, and Tektronix and was listed in the Fortune 500. Dow is credited with creating the company's European distribution network. After Black Monday, the company was forced to downsize and was eventually purchased by Minolta to become Minolta-QMS in 2000.

Prior to this, Dow left QMS and entered electoral politics, joining the Democratic Party. He ran as a candidate in 1989 for city council from District 6.

From 1911 to the 1980s, the city had a city commission government, with commissioners elected at-large. It returned to a mayor-council government to provide more representation by a breadth of city voters. Arthur Outlaw was elected as mayor in 1985, for the first time since 1911 as a direct candidate, by a comfortable margin. He ran as a 'statesman' candidate, based on his having served terms on the city commission in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

During his term, he worked with the city's first directly elected council in 1987 to pass an historic 15-year master plan. It proposed construction of a convention center on the Mobile River to stimulate downtown development. Gradually opposition to the convention center mounted. Outlaw was affiliated with Spring Hill College and active in the Mobile Carnival Association (he was a member of the 1948 MCA court); he was considered to be part of the traditional Mobile establishment. During this period, he also served as Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. (Municipal elections in Alabama are non-partisan.)

Dow intended to run for City Council from District 6 in the southwestern portion of the city. Joe Bullard, who owned an auto dealership, was pondering his own run for the mayoralty. Early in the season, former mayor Lambert C. Mims was indicted for ethics violations while in office. He was considered the primary competitor to Outlaw. Mims suggested that Dow run for mayor, and said he would give him strong support from his base.

At the urging of Bullard and Mims, businessman Dow decided to run for Mayor. He promoted himself as a new style candidate, reaching out to both black and white voters. Dow's campaign included a coalition of African-American ministers and he frequently attended mass at African-American churches throughout the city. He campaigned against the convention center. He won the election by a very convincing margin and his election suggested a shift in leadership in Mobile. Dow's victory was based on his support among middle-class white voters and African Americans. Outlaw carried the upper-class white vote.[4]

During his early months in office, Dow demonstrated his interest in downtown redevelopment. Despite campaigning against the convention center, he began to support the project. Dow proposed what he called "The String of Pearls", a series of projects meant to help spur the redevelopment of downtown. He moved forward with both the strategies outlined in the 15-year plan of Outlaw, and the convention center. Dow dramatically increased capital spending, as well as the city's sales tax, raising it to 4%, giving Mobile an overall sales tax rate of 9%.

During his first term, Dow worked with county leaders to secure the construction of Mobile Government Plaza, the first governmental structure in the United States to house both city and county governments.

In 1993, Bess Rich was elected to the city council in District 6; Dow won re-election that year with more than 65% of the vote. Rich frequently questioned Dow's agenda of capital spending without a sustainable revenue source. Most of the city council supported him. When the Mobile BayBears team approached the city, Rich opposed the borrowing for construction of the stadium because she believed in allowing the public to vote on non-basic service capital projects. She also opposed the attention Dow gave to capital projects downtown, because of the increased debt load from borrowing it placed on the community with no thought to paying back the debt or obtaining funds to support maintenance of the projects. As a result of Dow's aggressive capital building program, the city was left with little money in its future budgets for basic capital needs. In 2001, Bess Rich gave him the strongest challenge for his office since his initial election in 1989.

Another key feature of the Dow administration were attempts at annexation. The Mobile city limits, with the exception of a few areas, had largely been set with the mass annexation of 1956. At various times, Dow put forth proposals to annex parts of West Mobile and Tillman's Corner, but these failed. Dow was highly popular in the city, but not so in the suburbs. His support for expanded gambling in the state (and city) was opposed by many evangelical Protestants. belief that legalized gambling would be a boon for Mobile, and the fact that the casinos in Biloxi were drawing a large clientele from Mobile. Another concern of this area was their concern that Dow would increase their taxes as he did in the city. His terms as Mayor saw a general erosion of white support over time (though over time he picked up most of Outlaw's voters from 1989) while he steadily increased his support among black Mobilians. Dow cruised to re-election in 1997, and began to be mentioned as a gubernatorial candidate.

During Dow's third term, downtown redevelopment continued. In 2001 Dow signed a deal with the Retirement Systems of Alabama to construct a skyscraper in downtown Mobile. The RSA Tower now towers over the city at 745 feet In 2001, Bess Rich, who had limited herself to two terms on the city council, decided to run for mayor. Rich challenged the mayor on the borrowing which the city had done. Dow won the election 61-39%, winning every district except Rich's own District 6, where he lost 55-45%. (By comparison, Rich had won that district with 70% of the vote in her re-election bid in 1997). In 2001 Charlie Waller and Mabin Hicks, Dow allies on the council, were replaced by Steve Nodine and Ben Brooks. Connie Hudson won in District 6 and the three formed an anti-Dow bloc on the city council.

The main issues of his fourth term were an annexation of West Mobile which failed, a vote in West Mobile to incorporate it, which also failed, and the construction of the Alabama Cruise Ship Terminal on the waterfront, which added its second ship in August 2008. Dow also began actively courting Thyssen-Krupp, which was surveying sites for a steel mill, and Boeing, which was investigation sites for manufacturing their Dreamliner plane.

During the course of Dow's fourth term, crime in Mobile continued to drop. His popularity began to rise as people saw the results of investment in downtown Mobile.

It was also during his fourth term that the proposed "Mardi Gras Park" was approved, in a deal with the Mobile County Commission.

After stepping down from office, Dow went to work for his brother-in-law, this time for the CentraLite venture. He also became involved with the effort to create the Alabama Motorsports Park on a site located north of Mobile. Dow helped gain a site in Mobile County over a possible site in Baldwin County. Dow serves as a member of the board of the track venture.