AU Perspective: Alabama Power Brokering

April 2, 2026 - AUBURN, Ala. - Dismissal proceedings are underway at AU against a high-profile Professor who has publicly criticized and disciplined administrator malfeasance. The charge is reportedly "repeated acts of insubordination" - i.e., this professor voiced inconvenient things effectively enough to disturb power brokers [grubbers] enjoying substantive wealth redistributions.

Proceedings were initiated by Vini (Interim-to-Permanent) Nathan, an illegitimately serving Provost whose installation was documented in a past column (see “Reducing Auburn Greed,” Feb. 2025). Long time readers may recall AU announced interim provost candidates wouldn't be considered for the permanent position, then installed Dr. Nathan anyway. No national search. No public deliberation.. sound familiar basketball fans? The same ole bait-and-switch or “Chattahoochee Two-Step” as some Auburn faculty insiders call it. So let's be clear what's happenin' on the Plains: an illegitimate Provost installed via a rigged process (whose own appointment wouldn't survive honest scrutiny) is now moving to fire a Professor for the sin of asking questions and occasionally exposing administrative misconduct.

When faculty attempted to raise questions about the ethics of Nathan’s candidacy, Susan (a.k.a., Bride of Felonstein) Hubbard and Jennifer Adams, Auburn’s Vice President for Public Affairs, Communication and Marketing, refused to allow it. The search committee who rubber-stamped this appointment illustrates how AU governance actually works. Hubbard chaired it, and CLA Dean Jason Hicks also served, meaning two of Nathan’s own direct subordinates sat in judgment of whether their boss would get the job. The board added trustees Quentin Riggins of Alabama Power and Elizabeth Huntley to further illustrate. No national search; no public deliberation, and Interim Provost Nathan’s only two ‘competitors’, George Flowers and Paul Patterson (Deans of the Graduate School and College of Agriculture respectively) have both since departed their positions. This installed Provost now machinates to fire a Professor for the sin of asking questions and occasionally calling out and disciplining administrative misconduct.

THIS IS AUBURN: 2026. To help readers understand how Moscow on the Plains got to this point, we can juxtapose the assault on free speech at Auburn with another faction of the politburo, Alabama Power Company. ALPCO does not like deliberation. They do not like rate hearings. Just like “Provost”, Vini Nathan, does not like honest national searches and faculty who ask questions. The politburo similarly loathes non-Pravda journalists who follow the money. They've spent decades making sure deliberation stays off the Auburn and ALPCO agenda; little surprise these two parasitic incestuous lovebirds like to bathe in the same sewer!

Start with rate hearings... or more specifically, the absence of them. Alabama has not held a formal utility rate case since the early 1980s. Over four decades Alabama Power convinced the PSC to replace hearings with a formula [Rate RSE] that locked in a 13% to 14.5% return on equity for thirty years as sovietized interest rates fell to near zero. The PSC adopted a new "weighted return" framework in 2013, an arrangement which has also never faced a public hearing. Per federal filings analyzed by Inside Climate News, Alabama Power customers pay the highest total residential bills among the hundred largest utilities in the country. Former Commissioner Terry Dunn said it plainly: "Southern Company and Alabama Power run the state."

A regulated entity avoiding public scrutiny four plus decades is not one promoting free-thinking professors asking inconvenient questions at a university it helps govern and control to aid and abet political theft. And govern it does. Zeke (Matrix Contract) Smith, formerly Alabama Power's EVP of External Affairs (retired 2023, but the board seat endures), has sat on AU's BoT since 2022. Quentin Riggins, Alabama Power's SVP of Governmental and Corporate Affairs, was re-confirmed to the board in 2024. Jimmy Sanford, the board's current president pro tempore, is a former Alabama Power board director. Three seats for one soviet regulated monopoly. What does a power company's government affairs division have to do with educating Auburn students? Nothing... unless the goal is something other than education. A Felon Hubbard crony Dean, part of Auburn Bank’s subsidy of legal fees to impede justice, was instrumental in killing a once healthy relationship with Southern Company (and other regulated utilities/industries) and an AU Research Center.

Readers may recall recent documentation of Rep. Troy Stubbs's HB 580 (https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/03/31/opinion/au-perspective-costbenefit-analysis-of-hb-580-tenure-bill/10546.html), the bill to abolish faculty senates unless governing boards vote to keep them and weaken tenure protections Statewide. The bill passed the House 82-18-5 on March 31. But here’s the soviet-twist. The Stubbs substitute (amendment NRYZSTJ-1) adopted on the House floor that same day, inserted identical language into all three articles of the engrossed bill: "It is the intent of the Legislature that no provision of this article shall be construed to impede a constitutionally created board of trustees' authority to manage its respective campuses." Translation: AU and UA systems - whose governing boards are chartered in the state constitution – cannot be compelled to comply. Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) forced the question on the floor, and Stubbs admitted it plainly: "We can't compel them to do anything."

Little solace in such exemption. Dismissal proceedings described above prove the point. Auburn’s constitutionally chartered board doesn’t require statutes to silence faculty when they already have a finely tuned silencing machine on the inside. The engrossed version of HB 580 would have faculty senate leadership positions appointed by the university president, bar senates from official statements on matters outside board-defined duties and strip tenure protections at every other public institution in the State. Auburn’s board apparently decided it does not require the legislature’s permission to achieve the same end. Secretary of State filings show Alabama Power’s employee PAC contributed $3,500 to Stubbs. The BCA’s ProgressPAC, whose chairman Kevin Savoy works for public servant Auburn trustee Jimmy (a.k.a., YellaGrubber) Rane’s Great Southern Wood, added $6,000. Silence the people who might deliberate and fund the politburo members who write the gag orders.

This is where Matrix LLC enters the picture. Contract documents show Alabama Power paid Matrix, Joe Perkins’ (a.k.a., Skeletor - some AU faculty say, “dirty deeds, NOT done cheap!”) Montgomery ‘influencer’ firm, $90,000 to $124,000 per month. Matrix and its clients funneled at least $900,000 to friendly media outlets (per Floodlight/NPR) and ran ghost candidates in Florida [home of TuberGrubber] senate races that produced criminal charges against five people. Zeke Smith oversaw the Matrix contract and sits on the AU BoT. Auburn paid Matrix over $1 million annually through a direct retainer and a McCrary Institute contract, the institute endowed with $10 million from the Alabama Power Foundation. The roaches are all in the same Hell’s Kitchen.

I taught economics at Clemson and Auburn for 30 years; regulated monopolies are not known for attracting the sharpest minds in American business. When your revenue is guaranteed by a government formula and your regulator has not asked a hard question since Comrade Reagan’s first term, “innovation” means finding new ways to avoid public oversight to advance political theft. The brightest go where competition rewards creativity as I observed in my years at FoMoCo. Alabama Power attracts parasites who prefer a sure thing and puts them on a university board whose stated purpose is the free exchange of ideas (esp. inconvenient ones). The irony would be delicious if it were not so deleteriously expensive for ratepayers and students alike.

In closing… No rate hearings for four decades. A professor facing dismissal for speaking up. HB 580 exempts Auburn on paper while the grubbers on the BoT silence faculty through their inept minions in the AU administration. Alabama Power does not like deliberation because deliberation is something a monopoly cannot control. The Alabama House passed HB 475 by a vote of 104-0, requiring rate hearings every three years, though a Senate committee has since diluted the bill as politburo watchers expected. Pray legislatures may find the Holy Spirit this Holy Week and provide just a little sunlight, which is the one disinfectant to ‘Downtowner’ political theft activists like John Rice combat. Alabama Power and the corrupt BoT and administration at AU have enjoyed darkness far too long.

John Sophocleus is a retired Ford Motor Company Warranty & Policy Administrator and a retired Auburn University Instructor of Economics. A former Libertarian candidate for Alabama House and Governor; U.S. House District 3 and US Senate candidate, he’s also a monthly Alabama Gazette columnist since 2009.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Alabama Gazette staff or publishers.