The Alabama Republican Party is celebrating recent local election victories as a sign of strength in the state, while Democrats argue the narrative is more complex, highlighting their efforts to engage voters and the closeness of the races.
John Sharp, al.com The Alabama Republican Party is celebrating a string of local election wins, including a hotly contest mayoral runoff in Mobile , as a sign of the GOP’s strength in one of the nation’s most reliably red states.
State Rep. Barbara Drummond, a Democrat who narrowly lost Tuesday’s Mobile mayoral runoff to Republican Spiro Cheriogotis, said the GOP is embellishing the narrative. “This was a campaign about Mobile,” Drummond said. “We wanted to maintain that we were fighting for those who are left behind and the forgotten community in this city. We wanted to engage all of those neighborhoods and we achieved that. It was an awfully close election … terribly close. It signals that more people need to get involved in the electoral process. Mobile is facing a great future and we need people to step up to the plate.” People are also reading… Partisan reactionsThe Alabama GOP hailed Tuesday’s results as a repudiation of what it called “far-left influence,” citing runoff victories in Mobile, Hoover and Guntersville. “These victories send a clear message and underscored the power of local voters rejecting far-left influence in Alabama’s cities,” Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl said. “Voters want leaders who will keep our neighborhoods safe, build a stronger economy, and defend our freedoms — not big-government politicians who think they know how to live our lives better than we do.” Jeff McLaughlin, a former Democratic state lawmaker who lost to incumbent Mayor Leigh Dollar in the Guntersville mayoral runoff and who attempted to keep partisan politics out of his race, said he was “disappointed” in how it “degenerated into the partisan cesspool that it did.” Wahl said the party is committed to “standing with our candidates in every race, from Washington to Montgomery to City Hall,” and has openly questioned whether nonpartisan elections — standard in most U.S. municipalities — should continue.“Barbara had a strong turnout. We are proud of the campaign she ran,” said Mobile County Democratic Party Chairman Ben Harris. Harris pointed to other Democratic successes, including the election of Jae’Ques Brown in Greenville, who defeated five-term incumbent Mayor Dexter McClendon to become the city’s first Black mayor. Brown, a Democratic Party leader in Butler County, won with 59% of the vote in a city that is 62% Black. In Bay Minette last month, voters also elected the city’s first Black mayor, Joshua Brown, who ousted longtime Mayor Bob Wills in a majority-white city. Endorsement reactionsStill, the biggest battleground this week was Mobile, where Cheriogotis’ victory over Drummond marked a Republican win in a majority-minority city that had attracted national attention. Drummond received endorsements from national Democrats including U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia, a Mobile native. Former Vice President Kamala Harris gave Drummond a brief shoutout during a TV interview the night before the runoff. But notably absent from the endorsement list was Mobile’s own Democratic congressman, Rep. Shomari Figures, who did not back either candidate and did not respond to a request for comment. “What really surprised me is we had Congress people from Georgia endorse Barbara,” said State Rep. Sam Jones, a former Mobile mayor and longtime ally of Drummond. “He is from Mobile, but the Congressman from Alabama didn’t endorse anyone. I don’t know what the problem is with that, but it certainly didn’t help her.” Drummond, the Democratic Caucus chair of the Alabama State House of Representatives, said she never asked for endorsements. “I didn’t go out and ask anyone,” she said. “All those endorsements that came in are from people who looked at this race and knew it was winnable, and they endorsed freely. It wasn’t because I was asking anyone to endorse me because I was not.” The timing couldn’t have been more precarious: the endorsements landed as the national Democratic Party grapples with historically low approval ratings even as President Donald Trump’s overall support drops. Republican political analyst Steve Flowers said the influx of national Democratic attention may have backfired. “The national and state Democratic Party making it a Democratic race backfired, and the Republicans reacted more to the partisan rhetoric,” Flowers said, noting that the message appeared to resonate with white voters in Mobile’s newly annexed areas. Annexation factorIn 2023, voters in west Mobile approved a large annexation effort that added more than 19,000 residents to the city, making Mobile the second largest in the state and shifting its demographics. Annexation also added more white residents to the city, which likely meant more Republican voters. In Alabama, like other Southern states, racial demographics often align with political party affiliation. Beverly Cooper, co-founder of Stand Up Mobile – a group that pushed back against annexation two years ago — said the effort diluted the recently obtained Black majority the city had after the 2020 Census count. The Census put Mobile with a 49.7% Black to 44.4% white split among voting-age citizens. After annexation, the split was more evenly divided. “They said it would not do anything to impact the Black majority,” Cooper said, echoing comments made in support of annexation before the 2023 special election. “I think it did.” After this year’s election, the racial demographic make-up of the city’s leadership remains unchanged for the next four years. The Mobile City Council will continue with a 4-3 white majority, while the mayor is also white. “That was one of the biggest concerns we had and tried to impress upon the council and the administration and the citizens of Mobile that this annexation would end up diluting the recent majority ,” Cooper said. Election results appear to support that concern. At the Creekwood Church of Christ precinct, a newly annexed area, Cheriogotis beat Drummond 1,427 to 469 — a 958-vote margin in a race he won by 1,391 votes overall. Drummond increased her vote count in that precinct by 218 between the Aug. 26 election and the runoff. Cheriogotis increased his vote total by 1,004. Black voter turnoutDespite losing, Drummond said she saw a positive sign in increased Black voter turnout. But turnout was uneven across Mobile’s council districts. Council District 3, represented by Council President C.J. Small — a Drummond supporter — saw the lowest turnout. Districts 4 and 5, which went for Cheriogotis, had the highest. Overall, 31% of Mobile voters cast ballots in the runoff, up from 26% in the Aug. 26 election. But that’s down from turnout levels in previous mayoral races, including 35% in 2013 and 31% in 2017.“I remember during my first election at the Figures Community Center, we had 160 people waiting to vote when the polls were closing,” Jones said about the 2005 mayoral contest, which he won. “At my last election , there was hardly anyone at the polls at the end of the day.” Cooper agreed, saying younger voters are less connected to the Civil Rights era narratives that traditionally motivated Black turnout. “It is systemic and much deeper than a matter of folks who would respond to the stories about gaining the right to vote,” she said. “It’s a different world nowadays.”“I don’t want to criticize or critique my opponent. I think we ran really tough races,” he said. “There is no doubt Barbara Drummond loves the City of Mobile just as much as Spiro Cheriogotis loves the City of Mobile.” He added, “I’m thankful for our result and I’m thankful it resulted in around 1,000 more Mobilians voting for me. But I cannot ignore her constituents. I want to serve them, too. I want to serve everyone in Mobile. I hope Barbara and I can walk forward as leaders in this city and work together.” Jones said the tone of the mayoral race, even with national attention, remained refreshingly focused on issues.And for Drummond, win or lose, the message was about inclusion. “This was a campaign about Mobile,” she said. “We wanted to engage all of those neighborhoods and we achieved that.”
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