I once used the term “paleo-progressive” to describe my views. Here’s an excerpt about the political career of Braxton Bragg Comer:
Conservatives opposed Comer, not because they viewed him as a radical reformer, but because the changes he championed either did not benefit them or directly harmed their allies. . .
By midsummer 1905 Comer had made up his mind to run for governor in 1906, and he traveled about the state taking the pulse of the people. Comer’s political position was not clear. In 1905 he privately wrote, but he did not publicaly say, that there had been “too much class law in Alabama and too much class rule.” . .
When the Democrats held their state convention they constructed a platform that betokened the “new era.” Here was railroad regulation, a child-labor law, and the demand for compulsory education and better schools. Also in the platform was a harbinger of coming concerns – the call for a local option law on the sale of alcoholic beverages.”
William Warren Rogers, Robert David War, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flint, Alabama: The History of a Deep South State (Tuscaloosa and London, The University of Alabama Press, 1994), 358-359