Bedsole owns and operates Bedsole Farms, in Perdue Hill in Monroe County. She is the president and board chairman of the White Smith Land Company in Mobile. She chairs the distribution committee of the Sybil H. Smith Charitable Trust. She has been a trustee of both Spring Hill College in Mobile and Huntingdon College, a liberal arts institution in the capital city ofMontgomery. She was involved in the establishment of the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science in Mobile, which named its reception building in her honor. She is the founding former president of the Alabama Forest Resources Center and Mobile Historic Homes Tours. She headed the celebration Mobile Tricentennial, Inc. She is a member of the Junior League. Bedsole was an alternate delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention, which met in San Francisco to nominate the Goldwater-Miller ticket. In 1966, she became a member of Alabama Republican State Executive Committee. She was a delegate to the 1972 Republican National Convention, which met in Miami Beach, Florida, to re-nominate the Nixon-Agnew slate. She was a Nixonelector in 1972. When Bedsole was elected to the state House in 1978, she was joined by another Republican, W. J. Cabaniss Jr., of Jefferson County. Four years later, she moved up to the state Senate, as did Cabaniss. As a senator, Bedsole chaired the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee. In 1994, rather than seeking a fourth term in the Senate, Bedsole, considered a Moderate Republican, ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. In a runoff election, she was handily defeated by former Governor Fob James, a Republican-turned-Democrat-returned Republican. James, considered a conservative, defeated Bedsole, 130,233 to 79,338. Eliminated the first round of balloting was Winton Blount III, son of the former Postmaster General of the United States Winton M. Blount Jr., the Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 1972 against John Sparkman. Bedsole refused to endorse James in the general election, but he narrowly prevailed over the Democratic Governor James Folsom Jr., who had succeeded to the governorship after the forced exodus of Republican Governor H. Guy Hunt of Cullman. Oddly, James as the Democratic nominee in 1978 had handily defeated Guy Hunt, as Bedsole was elected to the state House of Representatives. On August 23, 2005, Bedsole ran for mayor of Mobile on a pledge to continue the policies of the departing Mike Dow, who had served for four terms. She finished with less than 14 percent of the vote. In 1972, Bedsole was elected the "First Lady of Mobile". In 1993, she was named "Mobilian of the Year". In 1998, she was designated "Philanthropist of the Year".
