Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: WVUA FM tuscaloosa.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Hello everybody, and welcome to season two, episode 14 of Paul of the Nation. And today we are talking Alabama. We are talking the new congressional maps that have been imposed by the federal courts that were drawn up by the Special Master. You will see that map posted on our Instagram promotion of this episode. So you all have an idea of what the new maps are going to be. The comparison by daily cost elections is up. And let me just go ahead, let's just jump right into it. So let's just jump right into the current composition, the partisan composition, racial composition, and then the future expected ones. So you have six white Republicans and one black Democrat. One Democrat, Terry Sewell represents the majority black 7th District, which right now the old map covers parts of, you know, black Birmingham, areas like Know, Bessemer, Fairfield, looking retail areas like that. Then it goes into and contains all pickens a lot of rural west Alabama and into Lounge and then gets parts of the city of Montgomery as well. The first district is Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, Monroe and most of Scambia Counties. The second district, most of Montgomery, you have Altaga and Elmore to the north and then southeast Alabama as well. And that's represented by Barrymore. The first represented by Jerry Carl. Jerry Carl is actually from my hometown in Grand Bay. So shout out Grand Bay for producing a representative.
And now we go into, we'll go into the new maps. There are some minor changes to the fourth, the fifth and the third, but nothing too crazy here.
For the third district, we'll go over the minor changes. So the third district loses county, loses what parts of Chilton County it had. It loses Russell, it loses Macon counties, but it loses some parts of southwestern Talladega County, but it gets Etowa County. It gets Gadston in the third district. And Mike Rogers will represent that. It's probably, I would say, a win for Gadston in terms of seniority in the House and influence in the House. Since Rogers is the chair of the House Armed Services Committee. If he was in the minority, he would be the ranking member. And with that comes a lot of influence in the area. Mike Rogers is from Sachs, which is near Aniston in Calhoun County. So just to let y'all know. So talk about the fourth district.
It loses Lawrence County to the fifth. It loses blunt county actually gains blunt county from the 6th. It gains parts of Lauderdale County, parts of north central Lauderdale County as well. And Tuscaloosa boards are redrawn to where it gains more of Tuscaloosa County. It essentially draws in like most of northport, gets Hulk, gets southwestern Tuscaloosa County, but it doesn't get Tuscaloosa south of the Black Warrior river.
And as for the fifth congressional district gains lawrence county, loses parts of Lauderdale as well. Now the fifth district, it's represented by Dale Strong, a Republican from, they'll say, Huntsville, but Huntsville area, northern Alabama. Now, it contains just the far eastern portions of Lauderdale county contains Lawrence County now and the fourth district is represented by longtime Republican Representative Robert Agahol as well. So something to remind you of as well. Now we'll talk about changes to the 6th district that is represented by Representative Gary Palmer. He's a Republican from Hoover and he loses parts of Jefferson County. That much is clear, I think. He loses parts of southeastern Birmingham. He loses some real western parts of Jefferson County that he had. The parts of Jefferson County that he had are essentially northern, eastern and know, suburbs and excurbs of Birmingham, central like, you know, Hoover and areas like that. And it goes all into, you know, he had Blunt County, he lost it to Aderholt, but he keeps Shelby, he keeps the rest of gets the rest of Chilton County. He gains that part of Talladega I was talking about, but he also gets CUSA, Otaga and Elmore in his district. So you could see a bit of a conflict. You could see a Republican from, say, Prattville or Millbrook potentially try and come up and shore up a southern part of the district. But Gary Palmer will have just too much the money. The part of the district which is the most population will be in Shelby and southern Jefferson, especially the other parts of Jefferson will go towards the Birmingham area candidate. So it's a bit of an interesting dynamic in the 6th district but something that's not going to come up probably until much later. Now we go into the big changes. So the first district, the first district had Mobile, Balwin, everything else that changed, it is now much more focused on southeast Alabama. It contains the cities of Enterprise and Dothan. It goes into andalusia but it still contains all of Escamia County, still contains Atmore, still contains all of Baldwin County. It still contains a large part of, you know, southern Mobile County where I'm from. And also areas like you have northern suburbs, exercise of Mobile, areas like Satsuma and Saraland and Mount Vernon are all now all still in the first district. Meanwhile, the second district, when it used to be southeast Alabama, montgomery based district now is much more regionalized. It is a Montgomery focused district. That's where the majority of the people are in the district.
That's where the representative of the district is probably going to be based in. But it goes from the city of Mobile into Montgomery, it goes up north to Washington County, contains suburbs, west Mobile and then Sims goes up to Central. Then Washington County contains southern Clark County. Then you have all Bunro, Kineca, Butler, Crenshaw as well. And then that Montgomery area. And it also contains, know, tuskegee and Union Springs and Troy are all in this district as well, as Phoenix City is in this district as well. So it's a wide swath know, southern black belt and also the cities of Montgomery and Mobile. And I will end up talking about that primary now before I get into anything else. So there's a few names which have been floated up. One from Mobile estate senator Vivian figures. She's been wanting to get up towards a higher level of elected office for a long time. I think she was A-U-S. Senate nominee against Jeff Sessions back in the day but she ended up losing quite significantly. It is Alabama after all and that's the only one from Mobile that I can find that may be running there's. Also actually there's Napoleon Bracey from Prichard which is a black suburb of pretty much a pretty much unanimously black suburb of Mobile. It's nearly 90% black. Napoleon bracy is from there. He's a state representative. He could also run in that primary as well. But the main figures are going to be from Montgomery. I have Tamika Sanders Coleman. She was a gubernatorial candidate in 2022. She ended up losing about eleven to twelve points to Yolanda Flowers and she's a state senator and she has been essentially viewed as one of the favorites in this open seat now which is now rated as Safe Democratic owing to its Democratic lean. Now I know in 2022 narrowly voted for K Ivy but also narrowly voted for Will Boyd. Black turnout was absolutely horrible in 2022. And with the creation of this district, with the creation of the infrastructure that has to follow, you're not going to have the same turnout difficulties as you had. Now I'll keep what I want to say about media markets and things like that on the back burner for a bit. Another candidate I want to talk about is Stephen Reed. He's the mayor of Montgomery and he's also the son of Joe Reed who is essentially the puppet master of the Alabama Democratic Party. So just a name to watch there. He has a bit of national recognition for his response to the chair incident, that incident Montgomery, if you know what I'm talking about. You know if you don't, you don't just look up like Montgomery chair and you'll end up finding out what I'm talking about. So he has a bit of national recognition coming in from that and there could be maybe a candidate or so from Phoenix City. But I think Phoenix City in that area will end up backing the candidate from Montgomery or one of the candidates from Montgomery. So I do want to say that the Mobile and Montgomery media markets are going to now, as a result of this redraw, they're now going to get attention that they would not have. Because now the second district will be viewed by Republicans in midterm environments as potentially competitive and as it is an open seat, as Republicans saw, Kavi did win in this district in 2022. They could say, you know, well we might want to throw down some money here, have an opportunity as a reach seat for example and the Democrats will want to ensure that this seat is a safe flip for them. So they're going to spend money in the Montgomery in the mobile media markets. So it'll be interesting to know how that ends up working out because I imagine people in Mobile and Ballot County are probably going to get ads for the mobile media market for like a Vivian figures or Democratic candidate that comes up in the second.
You know, obviously living in the first District for example, speaking of the first district that will also have somewhat of a brutal primary because two Republican incumbents Jerry Carl and Barry Moore got double bucked. Jerry Carl is from the Mobile area from and you know, Barry Moore is from Enterprise. And this is a very interesting dynamic because on the one hand it's Mobile and Baldwin which Jerry Carl should clean up with pretty easily I imagine. You'll get a supermajority in Mobile County, the parts of Mobile that are in the district and then there's a Scamby in the middle and then there's southeast Alabama, the parts that Barry Moore currently represents in Congress. Now Scamby County is represented mostly by Jerry Carl. So imagine he'll win that and it'll be a very interesting and potentially know regional battle because both Jerry Carl and Barrymore aren't going to give up their seats that easily and thus that will lead to sort of battle. Now who will win that battle I don't know because I'm going to be quite frank here. Both Carl and Moore have pros and cons, especially with the geographic primary that's going to end up happening. Whoever wins is going to be the candidate that's able to take the most from the other sheer graphic base and that is all I'll be able to say on that because that's all we know on that front and thus whoever wins that will probably have that seat for as long as they want it. It's an uber Republican seat made even more uber Republican than the first or the second are at this point in time. And so now I think we can move on to the 7th District. The 7th District I'll say it lost the parts of Montgomery did have to the second. It lost parts of Clark County to the second. It also lost parts of Tuscaloosa County to the fourth, gained parts of Jefferson County from the 6th.
So what will that mean? Well for one that means that more of the power in that district is going to be concentrated in Birmingham lesser it so in Tuscaloosa. And this is going to be a very interesting dynamic because Terry Sewell is from Birmingham. I think she's also from the Hoover area as well and thus you have a bit of a conflict here actually. And you would think, oh, Terry Sewell is going to have that seat for as long as she wants it and that is most likely going to end up being true. But there's going to be a very interesting primary that comes up as a result of this that is going to come from Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton. He's a Democrat from Greensboro in Hale County. And from what I've heard from my sources who have state legislative experience and from Politico and other sources, is that essentially what is happening here. The reason why Bobby Singleton wants to do this is because he and other state house and state Senate Democrats believe that, you know, hasn't really reached out to them, hasn't really reached out to the more rural parts of her district, rural West Alabama, and not just in Tuscaloosa, but like in Perry counties. And Morango and Sumter and Green pickens shockdah areas of areas like that.
They don't think she's been reaching out, they don't think she's had sufficient constituent services in the area and that she's been focused more on her base in Birmingham rather than focusing on Tuscaloosa and rural West Alabama. And so that's the argument Bobby Singleton is going to make, the argument for why he's going to run in that primary. But the problem is a majority of the people who live in that district live in Birmingham, in the 7th District, and UA is in the 7th District as well. We have a part to play in this as well. So I think it's very pertinent because our representative will not be Robert Attahall, it will be a Democrat, whether it be Terry Sewell, Bobby Singleton or someone else. So we have skin in the game here. So I do want to inform y'all of those circumstances. And Singleton hasn't officially announced that he's in, but I'm pretty sure he's filed some sort of exploratory committee in that he's willing to take on the challenge and thus it will be a very interesting Birmingham versus everybody else primary. Now, I don't know how Bobby Singleton is going to be able to pull out the victory, especially considering Terry Sewell has such a stronghold over Birmingham. Plus her church is in Selma as well. That's something that you also have to consider as can, if Sewell's the one making inroads in Singleton's rural base, then Singleton is kind of screwed, to be completely honest. Sewell will clean up that primary easily in that case. But yeah, very interesting dynamics that isn't know, Democrats will gain another seat automatically in redistricting that's going to essentially try, know, try and cancel out one of the seats Republicans will gain from gerrymandering North Carolina. That is expected to occur this month as well. The maps that the GOP is getting as a result of the newfound supermajority due to Tricia Cote from the Southeast Meckleburg County switching to the GOP over school vouchers and school choice and whatnot. So you have that just the know changes and how it changes control of the US. House and that Democrats will be getting a bit of a leg up with this.
And there's a lawsuit in South Carolina right now that's being argued before the Supreme Court. Supreme Court's heard arguments, making its own questions and deliberations over it. And what that lawsuit is isn't to get a second black majority district. It's. Essentially, they're claiming that Jim Clyburn's 6th Congressional District is packed. It's racial packing. And that's a form of racial gerrymandering. And what they want to do is they want to get the parts of Charleston that are in the 6th. They want to put it into the first, which is the low country, which is Charlote and Beaufort and areas like that.
They want to put all Charlote in the first with Nancy Mace's district. That will ultimately have the effect of Nancy Mace being a lot more vulnerable than she is right now. And that could also be very important because in a marginal district that would potentially vote for biden in 2024, should the Supreme Court approve, should the Supreme Court let the lawsuit go forward, should it uphold the lower court's ruling that is a racial gerrymander now? Should it uphold the ruling that will have the effect of making the first district more competitive since Nancy Mace is, according to split ticket, a pretty chronic underperformer, her War score wins above our replacement score aren't exactly they're not exactly great for 2020 or for 2022.
Now, 2020 was because of Joe Cunningham being a pretty strongish candidate, but 2022 in that environment, I don't know if you can excuse that for Nancy Mace because I think it was sort of like a high single digits win or something along those lines. And that's not something you can have. Earth it was an underperformance of a few points considering South Carolina's reddish lane and the red wave that overtook South Carolina as a result of bad black turnout, which you saw all over the south, especially in Florida as well. That's a lot more complicated, but you saw that in Florida as so again, it's just another case of redistricting know, Republicans going to draw gerrymander North Carolina, but Democrats could draw an even more aggressive gerrymander in, you know, and plus they're maybe getting seats in Alabama and maybe another opportunity in South Carolina. Potentially it's a low probability, but potentially an opportunity in Arkansas, for example.
We don't know if that's going to end up panning out. There's a lawsuit about getting Al Lawson's old seat back redrawn as Ronda Stain. There's a North Florida lawsuit coming up as well that could give Democrats another seat. So what this is going to do is every seat the Democrats are able to net win. And redistricting is going to make flipping the House a lot easier because there's a lot of bottom district Republicans, especially in New York and California, that Democrats would love to get out and like. Don Bacon in Nebraska as well, is another area they're going to target. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, tom Keen of New York as well, another seat they're going to end up targeting.
And so I think it is pertinent that we talk about these redistricting efforts, not just in the terms of how is this going to affect the makeup of the House, how is this going to affect speakers races? Because as we see in these speakers, races with majorities, this slim chaos is more likely to happen and that you have more of an opportunity for governance to be halted with these slight majorities, as we're seeing in this congress in that these House Republican leaders are finding it hard to corral these small majorities altogether when just a few dissenters are essentially able to essentially create sort of not stop gap, but sort of create sort of I'm not sure how to describe it, really. Sort of construct a barrier to House legislation, if you want to call it that.
That is most of what I want to talk about. I do want to end with talking about how this is going to be a net good. I try to be objective here but I want to say two things. One, this is a net positive. Blackberries are going to get the representation that they have deserved for God knows how long, and they're finally going to be able to get that representation, get that opportunity to let two candidates of their choice as is required. Under the Voting Rights Act and as they have deserved and as that's been denied to them by the Alabama state legislature and state government, but which has been granted to them by the federal courts. The second part of this is that Mobile and Montgomery and their media markets are going to get a lot more attention from political fundraising, particularly from the DCCC and the or the NRCC apologies that they have not gotten yet, because now you have a second district which is seen as a reach seat by Republicans and you have this open seat by Democrats and Democrats want to lock that down. Like I've said earlier, So if you live in Mobile, you live in Montgomery. I have friends mean I will say apologies for all the political ads you're going to be getting next year. But this is attention that those areas haven't had in a long time, especially on the federal level. The last time you had attention of this kind was, yeah, you have presidential elections as are put into every media market but the US. Senate race in 2020. You have the incumbent Democrat Doug Jones losing by 20 to Tommy Tubberville. That's the last time you would have seen national attention on Alabama. And now in terms of electoral politics, now you have this attention. Now you have this attention towards Mobile, Montgomery, Phoenix city and southern rural black belt.
And so you have a few colleges here that I want to essentially shout that are this district. South Alabama, Troy, auburn University at Montgomery is a separate thing. You have Huntington College, which is there. Tuskegee University is also located in this district as well. So those colleges will have a role to play in this election as well, political organizations in the area and the candidates who want to appeal to these sort of voters as well. So that is where I'll end this episode here. We'll be doing, of course, two episodes next week and for the next couple of weeks. So I want to thank y'all for listening to Pulse of the Nation. I'll have updates on the Speaker's race. I'll have updates on all the political news stories that crash upon America's shores over the course of and I will see you all next Friday.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: You any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama.
