GOP congressional hopeful takes sides in a political drama over Alabama Democratic delegates

A potential Democratic National Convention fracas involving dueling slates of delegates from Alabama has drawn the interest of the Republican candidate running in Alabama’s 2nd congressional district, and she’s taking sides.

Caroleene Dobson, who is battling Democratic nominee Shomari Figures in a rare contested General Election race for an Alabama congressional seat, said in a news release Thursday that she is siding with state Democratic Party Chair Randy Kelley in his spat with the Democratic National Committee over who is allowed to show up to Chicago next week as part of the state party’s delegates.

“Let me be clear, I agree with Chairman Kelley that overturning the Alabama Democrats’ slate of delegates prevents African-Americans from holding the seats they were already awarded, which is a shameful and unfair practice from any angle you view it,” Dobson said in a news release sent out earlier this month.

Figures, in a rebuttal, emailed AL.com Thursday and said that if Dobson is worried about Democratic Party matters, then “she should just join” the party.

“And I promise, once she goes Democrat, she won’t go back,” Figures said.

Supporting Kelley

Dobson called out Figures to take sides in the continuing dispute between Kelley and the DNC over the party delegates and who should be allowed to show up to vote on the floor of the DNC next week at the United Center in Chicago.

Kelley remains upset that 36 of the state party’s delegates were rejected by the DNC late last month, and Dobson said they were “unilaterally rejected and replaced” by the Biden/Harris campaign and the “prominent Democrats” supporting Figures’ campaign.

“Chairman Kelley is 100% correct when he says that Alabama delegates should be selected by Alabamians, not be a secret group of Washington, D.C. elites supporting Shomari Figures and his campaign,” Dobson said.

Dobson said Figures should either support Kelley “and the Black delegates he is fighting to protect” or take sides with what she said were the “unelected delegates that are being forced down the throats of Alabama Democrats” by the national party.

Two-thirds of the delegates going to Chicago are Black people, including state Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile.

“The goal of all Democrats is not fighting over delegates, but to make sure both Shomari Figures and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz get elected,” Drummond said. “That’s the sole goal. This is not about a power struggle, but to make sure those running for the Democratic seats get elected.”

Dobson, though, said Figures should comment on a controversy within his own political party, adding that “only a coward tries to hide behind silence on important issues like delegate controversy.”

Name calling

Figures, in his statement emailed to AL.com, shot back by calling Dobson “Alabama’s Marjorie Taylor Greene,” in reference to fiery right-wing congresswoman from neighboring Georgia.

“A privileged billionaire calling a Black man in Alabama a coward – for the second time – because he won’t do what she says?” Figures said. “Is that what leadership looks like?”

He added, “The name calling is pathetic, and honestly, just sad. As my 4-year-old son would say, ‘that’s not nice.” It’s the type of rhetoric people across this District are just tired of. I’ll pray for her.”

Figures said if Dobson “cares so much about Black people,” she should consider the following:

• Not support the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, massive document that outlines suggestions on a host of issues for consideration if a Republican is elected president. The document includes considerations to restrict Medicaid and Medicare access and mail-order abortion pills, has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks and was denounced by former President Donald Trump. Dobson has said she is “wholly unfamiliar” with the project, but the Figures campaign said her policies align the controversial document.
• Tell the State of Alabama to expand Medicaid, which he said would grant more healthcare access to thousands of Black people.
• Stop supporting efforts to “defund public schools.”
• Explain why she hasn’t led efforts to integrate her high school – Monroe Academy, which she graduated from in 2005. Accounts have surfaced in recent days that Dobson attended a so-called “segregation academy” that was formed as private school formed to sidestep Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 that ruled school segregation unconstitutional.

Figures blasted Dobson saying she likely didn’t attend a school with a Black person until “she left Alabama and went to Harvard in 2005. Now she has the answers on Black representation issues? I think not.”

The Alabama Democratic Party has not weighed in on Dobson’s statements. A party spokesperson did not return requests for comment.

Former Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones, in a statement to AL.com, said Dobson’s opinion on a Democratic Party matter is “laughable.”

“The nominee of a political party with such a rich history of minority voter suppression, including their efforts today, has no credibility opinion on something they have no clue about,” Jones said. “But the statement is pretty typical for Republicans these days where facts simply do not matter and these guys clearly do not know the facts.”

Delegate controversy

The delegate controversy arose anew this week after Kelley threatened legal action and accused those denying the certification of the 36 delegates as having racist motivations.

Those comments followed a July 25 news release in which Kelley claims the Alabama Democratic Party “is the only bona fide group that can do business in Alabama for Democrats,” and is the “only group that can make rules for how Democrats are elected.” The statement also alleges that an “illegal, self-serving group” was usurping the role of the state party by appointing the delegates to the DNC.

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison weighed in earlier this month by writing to Kelley that the state party missed deadlines to make delegate selections or challenge selections. Harrison also stated that all delegates were selected according to the state’s own regulations.

Alabama’s delegate selection plan, like those of other states, allows presidential candidates rights of review for each delegate candidate pledged to them.

“Refrain from any further miscommunication or misinformation to convention participants,” Harrison wrote to Kelley.

The delegate drama in Alabama is likely to have no impact on the pending nomination of Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. The DNC confirmed earlier this month that Harris had garnered enough delegates to secure the nomination.

Jess Brown, a retired political science professor and a longtime observer of state politics in Alabama, said the national Democratic Party has the final say on who gets to participate as a delegate during the convention.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled on the matter. In 1981, in Democratic Party v. Wisconsin, the court ruled in a 6-3 vote that state election law cannot preempt the delegate selection mechanisms of a national political party for that party’s national convention.

“Basically, we’ve had both conservative and liberal justices on the high court rule that basically a national party rules prevail in terms of this meeting of a private association,” Brown said. My guess is this disgruntled faction in the Alabama Democratic Party might make noise. If national party officials want to appease them in some way, they might do so. But as far as going to the convention and finding a way other than appeasement to get a vote, they will just be at the mercy of the national party.”

Strategic approach

Brown, though, said he can see the strategy utilized by Dobson to attract Black voters who are the majority in the redrawn 2nd congressional district. 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 ruled last year that Alabama’s congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 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 seat takes in all or part of 13 counties from Montgomery to Mobile and from the Georgia line to the Mississippi line.

“The effort by her suggest she is trying to get a sliver of the African American vote, particularly the Joe Reed faction in Montgomery, a faction that wasn’t happy with the Democratic primary (in the 2nd district) anyway,” said Brown.

Reed, an ally to Kelly and a longtime political powerbroker in Montgomery, requested in March that Figures and his Democratic primary runoff opponent Anthony Daniels – the state representative from Huntsville – be kicked off the ballot amid questions he raised over the possibilities of Republicans providing financial support to both candidates.

Reed, who heads up the Alabama Democratic Conference, endorsed state Rep. Napoleon Bracy of Saraland during the Democratic primary.

The ADC did endorse Figures ahead of the primary runoff in April.

“The race (between Figures and Dobson) is expected to be very close and every niche of the electorate matters,” Brown said. “She saw an opportunity to peel off the small subset of African American voters, and the Reed faction with its dispute with the national party, and she seized on that moment.”