Both GOP primary runoff candidates in Alabama’s newly-drawn 2nd Congressional District, Dick Brewbaker and Caroleene Dobson, have their roots in the district and currently live in Montgomery County. But they’re coming at the contest from different perspectives.
They’re vying Tuesday to be the Republican nominee in a district drawn last fall to give minority voters a chance to elect the candidate of their choice, a move that gives Democrats the chance to a second congressional seat for the first time since 2008.
Brewbaker, 63, a former state lawmaker and auto dealership owner, is largely running on his record and connections to the community. He received 39.5% of the March primary vote in an eight-person field.
“The right Republican can win, someone who can turn Republicans out,” Brewbaker told Alabama Daily News. “I think that’s me.
“… I’m well known as someone who can work with people on the other side of the aisle.”
Dobson, 36 and a real estate attorney, was a political unknown entering the race for the open seat last November. She said that helped her get 26.4% of the vote.
“The fact that I’m here in this race at this moment is indicative of the fact that people are kind of fed up with career politicians,” she said. “We want people that are going to represent us and fight to actually deliver results to the people of District 2 that restore our freedoms, and protect our rights and values. … I’m the candidate who will work with President Trump.”
Watch both candidates discuss their platforms on Capitol Journal below
According to late March campaign filings, Brewbaker has raised and spent about $1.75 million in the race. He’s loaned his campaign $1.6 million. Dobson had raised about $1.2 million and spent a bit more than $1 million. She’s loaned her campaign $992,000.
Dobson’s campaign has used some of Brewbaker’s State House votes and social media posts to try to cast him has pro-tax and anti-Trump. Brewbaker said he won’t go negative in his campaign, but points out that Dobson has spent most of her adult life outside District 2.
A native of Monroe County, Dobson attended Harvard University and then Baylor Law School in Texas. She met her husband, Robert Dobson, in Texas and spent about seven years practicing law there before moving back to Alabama in 2019 to join Maynard Cooper and Gale in Birmingham. In 2022, during COVID and after she was named a shareholder at the firm, her family that includes two young daughters moved to Montgomery, she said.
Brewbaker was raised in Montgomery, where four public schools are named for his family. He attended Vanderbilt University, studying economics and history. He and his wife, Ruth, raised five sons in Montgomery and now have five grandchildren.
Alabama Daily News recently asked both candidates questions about issues, priorities in the district that stretches across southern Alabama and from Mobile to Montgomery, and why they’re the best Republican to face either Shomari Figures or Anthony Daniels in the November general election.
Pledges
Dobson signed a pledge never to vote to raise taxes. She’s also said in ads that Brewbaker voted to raise taxes, including a vote in 2003 to put then-Gov. Bob Riley’s Amendment One on the ballot. It would have adjusted property and income taxes to create a fund to support education and health care efforts, among other things. Sixty-seven percent of voters rejected the proposal.
Brewbaker said while in the State House, he would vote to put decisions before voters, especially local amendments that had the support of municipal leaders.
Brewbaker served two terms in the state Senate, keeping a self-imposed limit pledge. If elected to Congress, he’ll serve no more than 10 years, he said.
“If somebody hasn’t done any good in 10 years, they’re not going to do you any good in 20,” he said.
Representing Mobile
Should either Republican win Nov. 5, Mobile and other Southwest Alabama areas will be in the unfamiliar position of being represented in Congress by someone outside the port city.
Brewbaker said representing Mobile shouldn’t be talked about like it’s a zero-sum game, where what one Alabama city gets, another loses.
“A lot of the projects, especially the ones that touch the port, will benefit everybody all the way up I-65,” Brewbaker said.
There are state and local investments ongoing in Montgomery and Decatur for inland ports where containers can be transferred from river to rail.
“Now, both of those container ports are gonna look mighty silly and useless if Mobile can’t get the containers out of the Port of Mobile,” he said. “So, spending federal money to improve the efficiency of the port — it’s not just a Mobile issue, it’s a Montgomery issue and a Decatur issue. It will help everybody, anything that makes a supply chain flow better is good for all the economic activity running right up that interstate corridor.”
Dobson said she’s spent two days a week during her campaign in Mobile, home to the second-fastest growing port in the country and has an expanding aerospace manufacturing industry.
“I have ensured and I will continue to ensure that I invest the time to meet with folks there to ensure that I’m representing them in a way that serves their interests,” she said.
Dobson said she’s put in 16-hour days recently campaigning across district.
“I think the people of Alabama District 2 deserve someone who is going to work for them and who wants to be accountable to them wherever they’re located in this district,” she said.
Federal spending
Both candidates have said they want to reduce federal spending.
“I’m for responsible use and strategic use of government funds for infrastructure funding, for instance,” Dobson said. “But the Biden administration has everything under the sun marked as infrastructure.
“… We’ve got to repeal the Green New Deal, we have entirely too many executive agencies that are each entirely too large. We need to think about eliminating some, we need to think about scaling the size of many of them down. And then also, I think we need to look and evaluate our commitments with respect to a lot of international organizations that were members of.”
She noted the U.S. funds nearly a quarter of the United Nations’ budget.
Brewbaker said federal departments that have “proven to be failures” should be eliminated.
“I would start with the United States Department of Education,” he said.
Since the current department’s creation more than 40 years ago, public education in the U.S. has been on the decline, Brewbaker said.
“Education is a state responsibility. Constitutionally it is. The federal government does not need a role in writing curriculum, and trying to decide what’s taught, how it’s taught and who it’s taught to.”
Brewbaker said the billions spent on the USDOE should be given to states through grants “and you’ll do a lot more good than funding a bunch of federal bureaucrats.”
About the $1.2 trillion federal spending plan approved last month — on which each Alabama Republican member of the House voted no — both Brewbaker and Dobson said they would have been no votes, too.
“We have got to cut our spending and this bill was egregious in terms of the level of pork included in it,” Dobson said. “Maybe we need strong conservatives who are willing to shut the government down to get everyone’s attention that we’re about to go off a financial cliff. Our inflation will never go down, interest rates can’t go down until we actually cut spending. And it’s time that we have strong conservatives in Washington that are willing to — even if it means a loss in popularity — but to stand up and address this issue.”
She notes that even during government shutdowns, Social Security benefits are distributed and military members still receive their pay. Those are the two groups she’d be most concerned about.
“(Maybe it takes a shutdown) to get the attention of America that we need to balance our budget.”
Brewbaker said Congress needs to stop passing omnibus spending bills.
“What each side is doing is trying to poison pill the bill,” he said.
“… Instead of one bill that does everything, we could divide the spending bills up and get honest votes. And I think the omnibus approach has proven to be an awkward failure. I mean, we haven’t had a real congressional budget in a decade.”
About Social Security and Medicare solvency
Asked about the future of Social Security and Medicare, Dobson said the promise of benefits has to be kept for those currently or about to receive them.
“With respect to those who are younger, and certainly those that are my age and younger, we’ve got to face the fact that the money just won’t be there,” Dobson said. “And we’ve got to stop politicizing this. The Democrats every two years kind of fearmonger with respect to the elimination of entitlements and then we never do anything about it.
“(We have to) roll up our sleeves, come together and recognize the reality that the money’s not going to be there and we’ve got to find a different solution.”
Brewbaker called Social Security an “absolute obligation” promised to Americans that must be met. But Congress will have to find a new way to fund it.
“We’re going to guarantee the benefits,” he said. “… But the idea that the current Social Security system — you’re going to somehow wave a wand and make it solvent. That’s crazy. …It’s been too late probably for the last decade. So it’s time for Congress to admit it and let’s come up with a new Social Security, Social Security 2.0 that we can actually put on a sound financial footing, so people have confidence moving ahead, because the federal government is going to have to guarantee those benefits.”
About Trump and supporting him in a purple district
About Trump, the likely GOP nominee for president, Dobson says she’s the candidate that would work with him and she’s used some of Brewbaker’s previous tweets criticizing him has anti-Trump.
“It’s really important that we not only get Trump back in the White House, we not only keep control of the House, but that we’re working in a unified manner to reverse all the damage that the Biden administration has caused,” she said.
Brewbaker said he’s the candidate who has financially supported other Republicans, including Trump and statewide candidates.
The social media posts Dobson’s references, Brewbaker countered, were about proposed 2020 tariffs that would have significantly increased the cost of building airplanes in Mobile and, to a lesser extent, automobiles in Montgomery. Local leaders asked lawmakers to speak out against the proposed tariffs, Brewbaker said.
“I said, yeah, if these tariffs go through, they will hurt Alabama’s economy, which was nothing but the plain truth” he said.
Trump listened and changed his mind on the tariffs, Brewbaker said.
Neither candidate said they think their support of Trump will hurt them should they make it to the general election against Figures or Daniels.
Dobson said more Democrats are realizing they’re paying more for necessities than they were when Biden took office and they want a secure U.S. border.
“By the day, Trump is polling higher with some Democrat voters,” she said.
Brewbaker said the district is a near “dead heat” when it comes to voting-age populations and some of his biggest achievements in the state Legislature play well on both sides of the aisle.
In 2017, he sponsored and passed legislation ending judicial override, the practice that allowed judges to override juries’ sentencing recommendations in death penalty cases. The same year, Brewbaker was one of a few GOP senators who forced a vote on and passage of legislation requiring insurance coverage of therapies for children with autism. The Business Council of Alabama opposed the legislation.
“People know I didn’t mind fighting with my own party in the Legislature,” he said. “I will do what I think is right, I’m not going to be told what is right.”
Like on the tariff, Brewbaker said he could disagree with policy while still supporting Trump as president.
“If you have a record of thinking for yourself, I don’t think that hurts you,” he said.
Freedom Caucus
Current District 2 Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise, is a member of the Freedom Caucus. Neither Dobson or Brewbaker appear likely to join.
“My No. 1 priority is ensuring that I am adequately representing the people of District 2 in standing for conservative values,” Dobson said. “… I admire a lot of what the Freedom Caucus stands for. I’m not saying that I would or wouldn’t but I’m really mostly concerned about ensuring that I’m accountable to God and to the people in District 2, first and foremost.”
Brewbaker said he’ll probably usually support the Freedom Caucus’ position, but doubts he’ll join.
“All or nothing approaches, like on earmarks, I don’t find that the best way to approach complicated subjects,” Brewbaker said.
“When it comes to earmarks … you’ve got to call balls and strikes, not just say no to everything. Some projects are worthy of federal dollars and some are just pork and aren’t. And I think intelligent people sitting in the halls of Congress should be able to differentiate between the two. And that’s the position I’m going to take on earmarks.”