Democrats in Alabama are swarming for a rare opportunity to increase their power
When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s congressional map last year as an illegal dilution of black voting power, the decision set off a heated redistricting battle.
Now voters will go to the polls for the first time Tuesday in a newly reformed Second Congressional District, which has been redrawn to give black voters a fair chance to elect a representative of their choice.
The shakeup has left a field of nearly two dozen candidates, underscoring the rare political opportunity on offer: a primary without an incumbent, and because black voters historically prefer Democrats, a suddenly competitive race in ruby-red Alabama.
“If it doesn’t happen now, I think I’ll be 60 before anything else comes up,” said one of the Democratic candidates, state Rep. Jeremy Gray, 38, as he stood near the waterworks in Prichard, Alabama, in an attempt convince voters their way to pay their monthly water bills.
The race is also a test of what fair representation means in a state that has repeatedly provoked federal intervention by ignoring civil and voting rights laws. In addition to convincing people to come out and vote, Mr Gray said: “It’s a lot of knowledge in terms of what actually happened.”
Candidates and their allies have worked to campaign and ensure that thousands of voters are aware that they live in the newly drawn district. They have enlisted family members, tapped into student union networks and covered the hundreds of miles of roads between Mobile and Montgomery with campaign signs.
The new congressional map was drawn by an independent special master after a federal court found that the Republican-dominated Legislature had failed to draw fair lines. Although black people make up more than a quarter of the state’s voting population, only one black lawmaker, Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, currently represents Alabama in the U.S. House of Representatives, alongside six white men.
The district now cuts across hundreds of miles of the state, stretching from the state line with Mississippi to the border with Georgia. It covers much of the seaport city of Mobile; the state capital, Montgomery; and some rural counties in the Black Belt, with its rich, fertile soil and cotton fields once worked by slaves. About 49 percent of the district’s voters are black, up from about 30 percent before the redrawing of the boundaries.
The new map offers Alabama the chance to send two black representatives to Washington for the first time in its history and help determine control of the House of Representatives, which depends on a razor-thin Republican majority.
“We fought to get this seat,” said state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, a Birmingham-area Democrat who is running in the primary. I spoke to about a dozen women at a boutique in Montgomery, a few feet from a statue of Rosa Parks, she said the redistricting process showed that “you deserve to vote or possibly elect someone who looks like you.”
That significance is not lost in the heated battle for the Democratic nomination. Candidates have spent much of their time reflecting on their lives as descendants of sharecroppers or impoverished families in rural counties, surrounded by reminders and monuments to the civil rights movement.
“Every part of my career so far has been because of the people in places and schools in this district,said Shomari Figures, who returned to Mobile to run for the seat after working in Washington for the Justice Department. The son of Michael Figures, a senator and renowned civil rights attorney who died in 1996, and his wife Vivian Davis Figures, who succeeded him in the Senate, Mr. Figures has emphasized his family’s service to the district and the state.
The Democratic candidates are largely aligned on issues like protecting abortion and IVF access, expanding Medicaid and improving education and resources for rural communities. neighbourhood. (Legally, candidates do not have to live in the district to represent it, and several candidates in the primary live elsewhere, although they have pledged to move to the district if elected.)
“I live in Huntsville, but I am the minority leader for the entire state of Alabama,” said state Rep. Anthony Daniels, the top Democrat in the state House, whose hometown far from the district has been a clear target of criticism on his part. opponents. “So I do work for the entire state of Alabama.”
The jousting has become particularly tense among the leading candidates in the Democratic primary, a group that includes Mr. Daniels; Mr. Figures, who has come under scrutiny for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid he has received of a cryptocurrency super PAC; and state Rep. Napoleon Bracy Jr., who received the support of the influential Alabama Democratic Conference, which historically represented black Democrats.
“People should be able to run on their own merit and talk about what they did, not just try to buy the race,” said Mr. Bracy, who has long represented much of Mobile’s caucus in the State House . He added: “I have been on the front line. I understand exactly what the community needs.”
Republicans, for their part, are still eyeing the possibility that they can retain the seat. (Incumbent Rep. Barry Moore, a Republican, is challenging Rep. Jerry Carl in a neighboring district, rather than running for reelection in the redrawn Second District.) Leading candidates in the Republican primary field include State Senator Greg Albritton of Atmore, who chairs the powerful Budget Committee; former state senator Dick Brewbaker of Montgomery; and Caroleene Dobson, a real estate lawyer who has campaigned on her ties to the agriculture industry.
“If you look at past election history, a Republican who has a track record of working with Democrats can win this seat,” Brewbaker said in an interview.
Mr. Albritton, who ate chips and salsa at a Mobile restaurant last week, acknowledged that he still thought the district’s new boundaries were “drawn by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.” But, he added, he is running for the seat anyway out of concern for Mobile’s economic stability and the belief that he could represent the interests of everyone in the district.”
On Saturday, State Senator Merika Coleman and a group of students from Tuskegee and Alabama State University marched through a Montgomery neighborhood to introduce themselves and make sure people were aware of the upcoming election.
“Now it’s time to make sure we get a nominee with some fire and passion that will get people excited about November,” Ms. Coleman said. “Because this is not a permanent seat.”