The two candidates running in a competitive race for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district weighed in on Tuesday’s presidential debate by backing the candidate of their respective political party.
Republican Caroleene Dobson said she felt that Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris painted a rosier outlook on the country than what she is hearing as she travels the congressional district that stretches from Mobile north to Montgomery and includes a host of rural and mostly poor counties in the Alabama Black Belt.
“One of the candidates on the debate stage would have you believe that all is well in our country and we just need to maintain the status quo, but that’s simply not true,” Dobson said in a statement Wednesday. “Americans are being hurt by staggeringly high grocery prices, illegal immigration that is overwhelming our emergency rooms, classrooms, and job markets, and crime that attacks our communities, streets, and neighborhoods. If we keep electing the same Washington, D.C. crowd that created these problems, we will simply get more of the same, and I, like virtually all voters I meet in District Two, am desperate for change and will fight to deliver positive results for Alabama families.”
Democratic candidate Shomari Figures said that former President Donald Trump stumbled throughout the debate and was ill-prepared to take on Harris, a former prosecutor. He suggested that Dobson “should lead the calls for him to drop out of the race.”
Figures said that Trump pushed “lies, fear, and far-fetched conspiracy theories” and came across as “incoherent, and rambled about matters that had nothing to do with the questions asked.”
He added, “Last night was a textbook example of, ‘be careful what you ask for.’ After ridiculing President Biden and demanding he drop out of the race, Donald Trump got exactly what he asked for. And America saw that he was not ready for Kamala Harris.
Figures said Harris presented a “clear, positive, hopeful and achievable plan for the future.”
“We saw that Kamala Harris represents values of decency, humility, grace, class, dignity, truth, experience, and strength,” he added. “The people in District 2 want real leadership who will stand up for those same values and work to find real solutions for the challenges we face.”
Alabama 2nd District candidates Dobson, Figures to debate live on AL.com in October
Figures, 39, of Mobile; and Dobson, 37, of Montgomery face off on Nov. 5 in a rare competitive general election race between a Democratic and Republican candidate for a congressional seat in Alabama.
The contest was made possible after a federal court redrew District 2 following a ruling that Alabama’s previous congressional map most likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it packed too many Black voters into one majority Black district, District 7.
The district, currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Barry Moore of Enterprise, was drawn to benefit a Democratic politician after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling that Alabama’s congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the newly redrawn map includes the 2nd district that gives Black voters a better opportunity to electing a candidate of their choosing.
The new District 2 takes in all or part of 13 counties from Phenix City to Mobile. It’s about 50% Black, giving Democrats a chance to flip the seat and add a second Democrat to the state’s seven-member U.S. House delegation.
Both national Democratic and Republican parties are involved, and the stakes are high in this close race. Republicans hold a narrow 218 to 213 majority in Congress, and polling shows the race for the House majority will be tight in November.
