Brian Lyman, Alabama Reflector

Democrats have a rare golden opportunity in a deep red stronghold

A Doug Jones gubernatorial campaign was always going to be a “yes, but” proposition.

Can Jones do the job? Yes. Absolutely. But competence is no guarantee of victory.

Can Jones become his party’s nominee? Yes. Almost certainly. But there are two other Democrats in the race — Will Boyd and Chad “Chig” Martin — and Jones will first have to lock down his base. All three candidates should be mindful of Republicans crossing over for chaos purposes, especially if the GOP contest is noncompetitive.

Can Jones raise money? Yes. He pulled in $25.7 million in his 2017 U.S. Senate race and $31 million for his reelection bid in 2020. But in 2017, he faced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had long struggled to raise money. And unlike 2020, Jones is not the sitting U.S. senator in this race. That’s likely GOP nominee Tommy Tuberville, who has already raised $8.1 million for the campaign.

Can Jones win?

Yes.

The former senator is a formidable campaigner. Sure, he got dealt a good hand in the 2017 campaign. Moore’s nomination divided the GOP, even before the former chief justice faced multiple allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

Still, good cards are worthless if you don’t play them right. Jones was a model of campaign discipline, laughing off repeated Republican efforts to bait him. In the white hot national spotlight that fell on Alabama that year, there wasn’t a single serious misstep or mishap from the Jones campaign.

Next year’s environment might also benefit Jones. The economy seems shaky. Republicans appear indifferent to rising health-care costs. President Donald Trump’s net favorability rating in Alabama, per the Economist/YouGov poll, was 4.9 percent as of last week — not a particularly great mark in a state he won by 30 points last year.

And Democrats will almost certainly vote for Jones with more enthusiasm than Republicans will for Tuberville. Particularly if Tuberville’s campaign continues issuing comically arrogant statements like this one, treating his election as a foregone conclusion.

But.

There are more Republicans in Alabama who will vote for Tuberville with stone faces than there are Democrats who will cast their ballots with a smile. Straight-ticket voting means that candidate quality and even charisma are irrelevant. In 2022, straight-ticket ballots accounted for two-thirds of all the votes cast in Alabama. Straight-ticket Republican ballots were 44 percent of all votes cast.

In 2020, Jones outraised Tuberville three-to-one and was far more visible and public than his opponent, who said nothing about his plans and largely limited his interviews to conservative lickspittles. He still won.

It won’t be a surprise if Tuberville repeats that turtle strategy in a general election battle with Jones. It worked before. So long as he has that R next to his name, Tuberville is the favorite. Even if he wears a Florida Gators jersey all year.

And that’s before we get to Alabama demographics. In general, we are older, more rural and less educated than the country as a whole. Not trends that favor Democrats.

So yes, it’s probable, even likely, that Jones falls short next November.

But Jones has done a critical service for Democrats.

First, his presence almost certainly means the party will avoid repeating the disaster of 2022.

Underfunding and internecine squabbles have undermined Alabama Democrats’ recruitment efforts for years. But the party somehow managed to find a space below that ground-level bar in 2022. The party’s slate of statewide candidates that year consisted of amateurs and novices. None could raise money. All got blown out.

That almost wrecked downballot Democrats. Amid abysmal turnout, several Black legislators in safe blue seats found themselves in contests that shouldn’t have been close. Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, who represents a district that is about 60 percent Black, barely squeaked by a Republican opponent.

Provided Jones can raise money and wage a statewide campaign, Democrats should hold what they have. Depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a critical redistricting case out of Louisiana, Jones’ campaign could also be critical for the fortunes of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, a likely target of future Republican redistricting efforts.

And while straight-ticket voting could doom Jones statewide, it could be a benefit in a few marginal legislative seats, particularly those in Huntsville. Probably not enough to end the GOP supermajority, but enough to cut it and bring new faces and energy to Goat Hill.

The party should be working from now through qualifying in early January to find as many viable candidates to stand in as many legislative districts as possible. A Jones campaign will help local candidates with statewide exposure and fundraising. A large field of local candidates can keep voters engaged and enthusiastic for Jones.

Win or lose, Jones has given Democrats a rare opportunity for growth next year. Yes, Alabama will be a red state for the foreseeable future. But the former senator gives the party a chance to add some purple hues.

Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006, and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register and The Anniston Star. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist for Commentary, his work has also won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. He lives in Auburn with his wife, Julie, and their three children.
Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

How the federal government makes life in Alabama possible

If the state of Alabama had been around in 1776, elected officials here would have blasted Congress for the Declaration of Independence.

Dangerous overreach. Revolutionary. We’re tired of Washington ordering us around.

That’s what our leaders do.

It’s a long Alabama political tradition. Maybe even a rite of passage. No conservative official in this state gets attention until they perform the sacred act of facing north-northeast and shaking a fist at the Potomac, blaming it for all the problems we’ve brought on ourselves.

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When Gov. Kay Ivey called a special session last week to redo the state’s congressional maps – after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court determined that they violated the Voting Rights Act – she first made sure to utter a loud sigh.

“Our Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups do,” she said in a statement. (The “activist groups,” in this case, being Black Alabamians — including legislators — justly arguing that the original maps locked Black voters out of the political process.)

The next day, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville greeted the release of federal money for infrastructure by saying it was great to see Alabama “receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts.” Amid extensive (and sometimes gleeful) criticism from Democrats for voting against the bill that made that money available, a Tuberville spokesman told multiple media outlets that the original bill “wasted Alabamians’ tax dollars” but that he just wanted Alabama to get their “fair share.”

Our leaders hate the federal government. But they need it. We need it. Without Washington, Alabama would be a Mad-Max-style Thunderdome.

Take Alabama’s health care system. My colleagues at the Reflector spent a week going over the myriad ways it fails Alabama women. But one program that helps is Medicaid. More than 1.3 million Alabamians are eligible for the program, most of them children, the elderly or those with disabilities. It pays for at least half the births in the state.

Is this an oppressive burden on Alabama taxpayers? Hardly. The federal government pays for 73% of the program. Alabama gets an even sweeter deal because hospitals and nursing homes pay a tax to keep the program going. If Alabama ever expanded Medicaid, the feds would pick up at least 90% of the tab.

But that’s just Alabama’s fair share, right? What our leaders really don’t like is when Washington interferes with the decisions they believe rightly belong to them.

And yet, history shows that federal intervention generally makes Alabama a better place.

When the feds step in

For a brief period after the Civil War, federal soldiers protected the right to vote in Alabama against murderous racist thugs. At the turn of the 20th century, the federal courts were the only places the victims of Alabama’s horrific convict lease system could get (limited) justice.

In the 1950s and ’60s, U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson swept away Jim Crow statutes with a fearless disregard for the thugs who threatened him over it. The 1965 Voting Rights Act — and federal oversight — restored republican government to Alabama after 100 years. Alabama’s awful school funding disparities, a long legacy of Jim Crow, only began to close when federal education programs started up in the 1960s.

Federal intervention wasn’t inevitable. State leaders could have chosen to build a state on equity and the rule of law, one that reflected the needs and desires of the governed. You know: a democracy.

But from territorial status onward, Alabama’s elites created a system with two aims: protecting their status and guarding their property. Voices outside those small circles were at best irrelevant. Sometimes they provoked our leaders to start shouting or draw their pistols.

You can still see this attitude today. Alabama’s prisons are horror shows of physical and sexual violence. But to hear state leaders talk, the real horror would be the federal government forcing us to do something about it. Attorney General Steve Marshall in 2020 described it as submitting to a “hall monitor.”

Yet with a handful of exceptions like former Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster and Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, legislators refuse to treat the issue with any seriousness. And prior federal interventions have worked.

One initiated by Johnson in 1976 led to major improvements in health and safety in state prisons. Alabama did little to address the sexual abuse and harassment of female inmates at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka until the U.S. Department of Justice forced the state’s hand in 2015.

It feels like we’re headed toward another intervention. The DOJ is suing Alabama over inhumane conditions in state prisons. If the Corrections Department commissioner can tell legislators that the system denied medical furlough to a terminally ill inmate, without any questions from lawmakers, we’re going to need someone to step in.

Just as we need the federal government to ensure some basic level of decency in the state.

If our schools function; if we have any degree of political freedom; if Alabama is a bit less cruel to minorities than our leaders would like, it’s because Washington got involved.

So as you enjoy your July 4 holiday, turn north-northeast and salute the flag. The federal government makes life in Alabama possible.

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Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.