Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks sent political shockwaves across the state and country with his victory over U.S. Rep. Artur Davis to earn the Democratic nomination in Alabama’s upcoming gubernatorial election.

Tuesday’s victory capped a large comeback for the underdog Agriculture Commissioner. At one time Sparks badly trailed an opponent who has long been hailed as one of the South’s rising political stars.

Leaders of the Alabama Democratic Party had reportedly been so concerned with Sparks’ viability that they spent a great deal of effort seeking out stronger candidates.

Tuesday night, however, Sparks racked up 62 percent of the Democratic primary vote to Davis’ 38 percent.

Sparks said the results were not a big surprise.

“I don’t know that it’s particularly an upset,” he said. “I know if you listen to the pundits and the bogus polls then you might consider it an upset, but we’ve considered all along that we had a good shot at winning this campaign.”

“You always have a feel when you’re traveling the state of Alabama,” he said. “We felt good about the campaign. Probably not by this margin, but when we started seeing some of the trends, we felt very comfortable.”

Congressman Davis was widely considered to be the favorite heading into election night.

“This is not the speech I had planned to give tonight,” he offered in his concession.

Davis’ campaign had garnered a great deal of attention from both local and national media. But his downfall with Democratic voters may have been in November 2009, when he was the only black congressman to vote against President Barack Obama’s health care reform package.

Sparks pointed to Davis’ health care vote as a factor in the campaign.

“It certainly played a role,” Sparks said. “I don’t know how big of a role, but there were a number of people in that district that I heard from that it was an important issue.”

Also complicating Davis’ pathway to victory in Alabama’s Democratic primary was his decision to shun endorsements from major black political groups.

Those groups, including the Alabama Democratic Conference and Alabama New South Coalition, endorsed Sparks instead.

Regardless, Sparks said he does not believe race played any role in the Democratic primary.

“There is really no place for race in a campaign, and we certainly didn’t do anything in our campaign to inject race into it,” he said. “There certainly were some folks that tried, but we just kept focused and kept moving forward.”

Sparks ran on the main issue of legalizing gambling in Alabama, stressing that legalizing, taxing and regulating gambling would significantly aid many of Alabama’s needs, from medical care funding to improving schools.

Sparks also said he has no problem using a wedge issue, like gambling, in the general election.

“I don’t think any time you give the people of Alabama an opportunity to have a voice on a critical issue you could go wrong,” he said.

“People need to understand that we’re broke. The money that Barack Obama has sent to Alabama, the $2 billion, is gone. If we don’t find a revenue stream to come into this state, then education is going to be in trouble, Medicaid is going to be in trouble.

“Gambling in this state has been legal for many years, the problem with this particular issue is that we haven’t taxed it, we haven’t regulated it and we don’t have a gaming commission.”

Sparks credits telephone campaigning for overcoming the huge fundraising disparity between himself and Davis and looks to rely heavily on the tactic for the general election.

“We were relentless,” he said. “It’s something I don’t particularly like to do, but we have to do it, because it’s part of the process, and people started buying into our campaign. Fortunately we were able to raise enough money to get our message out, and we are appreciative of that. That is what we’ve got to do now, go back to the phone and start asking people to invest in our campaign.”

Sparks will face Robert Bentley, Bradley Byrne or Tim James in the Gubernatorial general election November 2.