Alabama Has A New Pretty Safe Blue District-- Will Primary Voters Pick A Conservative Dem?

Frontrunners Reps Juandalynn Givan and Anthony Daniels don't live in the district

When it comes to primaries, and especially progressives involved with primaries, no one is as good as the team at Primary School. This week they looked at the newly court-drawn district in southern Alabama, which includes much of Mobile, all of Montgomery (city and county), all of Butler, Macon, Monroe, Pike and Russell counties, which means Troy, Eufaula, Tuskegee, Greenville, Union Springs, Evergreen and Frisco City are all in the 48.7% Black district. Under these boundaries it would have voted for Biden in 2020 (instead of 64.2% for Trump). MAGA Congressman Barry Moore has fled to the first district where he will battle it out with another white nationalist, Jerry Carl.

Although there are 8 Republicans who have declared their candidacies— including state Senator Greg Albritton and ex-state Senator Dick Brewbaker— the Democratic primary will likely determine who will represent the new second district. Something like a dozen Democrats had claimed they were running, although not all of them are serious candidates. That’s where Primary School comes in. They sorted it out this week, now that the filing deadline has passed and they have 8 plausible candidates in the hunt, some of whom are almost as bad as a garden variety Republican, and many of them not living in the district at all— like the Birmingham candidates.

• Birmingham-area state Sen. Merika Coleman, who voted to criminalize trans healthcare

• Birmingham state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who has a penchant for pissing off Republicans and loves to quote song lyrics

• House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, who lives in Huntsville but grew up in the district. If being a leader of famously dysfunctional Alabama Democrats didn’t scare already you off, then his endorsement of Michael Bloomberg for president should

• Mobile-area state Rep. Napoleon Bracy. Bracy may be a boring guy who wears a bow tie every day and hasn’t made waves in the state house, but he’s well-liked and has clearly been preparing for this election for a while. That time he co-signed onto Republican fear-mongering about Planned Parenthood selling aborted fetus parts may come back to bite him, though.

• Opelika state Rep. Jeremy Gray. A retired professional Canadian football player (which we would make a joke about if we knew anything about Candian football— we think the field is wider?) and current personal trainer, Gray has only been in the state house a little more than a full term, and doesn’t have much of a political identity yet beyond being young.

• DOJ staffer Shomari Figures, the son of Mobile state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures

• Phyllis Harvey-Hall, the Democratic nominee for the old AL-02 in 2020 and 2022

• 2020 AL-01 nominee James Averhart, who may have residual name recognition in the Mobile portion of this seat, much as Harvey-Hall may have residual name recognition in Montgomery.

Primary School also pointed out that “Some notable candidates opted out of the race at the last minute: Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson did not file with the state as of the deadline, and both Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Montgomery state Sen. Kirk Hatcher took themselves out of consideration this week. In the event this becomes a regional contest, Montgomery— the single largest source of votes in the district— has no elected officials in the race, only Harvey-Hall and some equally-unknown candidates: Brian Gary appears to be a Montgomery surgeon, and Darryl Sinkfield appears to be a leader in the Alabama Education Association. Gray and Daniels both have some claim to the portion of the district east of Montgomery; Gray lives outside the congressional district, but his state House district includes much of Phenix City on the Georgia border, and Daniels’s family home is in Bullock County. Bracy, Figures, and Averhart are all from the Mobile area, and Coleman and Givan have the unenviable task of convincing voters to overlook the roughly ninety miles separating their homes from AL-02.”

Power players in the race will include the Alabama Democratic Conference (formerly the Black Political Caucus of Alabama), the New South Coalition and the Alabama Democratic Party.