Facing an uphill battle running as a Democrat in deep-red Alabama, first-time U.S. Senate candidate Kyle Sweetser is focused on courting the middle on issues like affordability and health care.
After voting for President Donald Trump twice in 2016 and 2020, the Mobile businessman said he slowly felt estranged from the Republican Party he had spent his life supporting.
An injury in 2021 left him with ample time to “educate” himself on how Republicans under Trump began to “abandon their constituents, abandon the state of Alabama, (and) abandon our country,” and that led him to speak out against the party he was once loyal to and landed him a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in 2024.
“We need to meet people where they’re at,” Sweetser told Alabama Daily News while on a trip visiting Washington for his campaign.
And for that reason, he’s taking an untraditional approach to his campaign — for a Democrat.
“We don’t need to run a social activism campaign,” he said. “We don’t need to do that. We need to focus on the economy. We need to focus on healthcare. We need to focus on the things that everyday people have really been left behind on.”
Economy and health care
Much of Sweetser’s focus has been on speaking out against Trump’s sweeping tariffs and their impacts on the state’s industries, such as the port of Mobile and auto manufacturing.
“First and foremost, we should reassert congressional authority over tariffs,” Sweetser told ADN.
He said the on-and-off again nature of the president’s tariffs and economic polices makes it harder for consumers and businesses to operate.
The first-time candidate personally felt the consequences of Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs, which he said increased the price of roll-up garage doors, which are a part of his construction business.
Sweetser also experienced the high cost of insurance firsthand, opting to go without coverage for about six years because of the price.
“The choice is, do I take my kids on vacation?” he said. “Or do I not pay for insurance? And that’s sort of how it is. And people just do what they can to do the best they can, usually for their families.”
But a diabetes diagnosis led him to seek out coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Sweetser is open to a new health care approach that makes premiums more affordable, though he didn’t name anything specific. But in the meantime, he doesn’t want to see the subsidies expire at the end of the year.
“I know that it’s not perfect, but outright cutting the tax credits … we can’t do that to people,” Sweetser told ADN.
The Alabama Democrat said he wants to hone in on those two topics throughout his campaign, instead of talking about social issues. And yet he has been unafraid to wade into one of the most-talked-about social issues: transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
“If you talk to sports teams, people that have played at a higher level, so people that are very competitive, they’re concerned about fairness,” Sweetser told ADN. “And I think that concern doesn’t need to be muddled down or watered down.”
About 69% of Americans believe transgender athletes should play on teams that match their gender at birth, according to a recent Gallup poll. But when broken down by political party, there’s a clear divide. For Republicans, 90% agreed with that assessment, while only 41% of Democrats did.
But Sweetser referenced another poll that showed 67% of Democrats believe transgender women should not compete in men’s sports to highlight what he believes is not a strong appetite among voters in Alabama for a candidate to be vocally in support of allowing transgender women athletes to compete in men’s sports.
He wouldn’t outright say if he would support or not support legislation, like Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s bill introduced this year, to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, arguing that the government should not be involved.
“I’m not running to be an activist and lose intentionally by 20 points like people do over and over again,” Sweetser said.
The Democratic candidate is also standing firm on that belief despite getting calls from “activist folks” that he said are closely aligned with the Democratic party, who he said want him to take a different stance instead of what he believes is the necessary stance to appeal to the state at large.
The campaign
Sweetser announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate in April. In the Democratic primary, he will be up against business owner Dakari Larriett, chemist Mark Wheeler, Lamont Lavendar, Valma Glasgow and Greg Howard Jr.
If he wins, he will have to compete against one of several Republicans vying for the seat, including Attorney General Steve Marshall, U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise, Morgan Murphy, a former advisor to Trump, and Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL.
To mount an effective statewide campaign, candidates need significant cash, which, as of the latest campaign finance reports, Sweetser lacks. He ended the latest quarter of 2025 at the end of September with just more than $5,000 cash on hand. Sweetser’s campaign raised $21,733 in the third quarter.
Recently, the campaign hired a dedicated fundraiser to help boost those fundraising numbers.
Sweetser’s campaign is also optimistic that the tailwinds of Democratic wins in the November 2025 elections could carry to red states. And a high-profile Democrat, former Sen. Doug Jones, will now be on the 2026 ballot for governor in Alabama, which could help drive turnout.
“So it’s just all now down to money,” Sweetser said.
The primaries are May 19.