MONTGOMERY, Ala. — With the general election just days away, candidates for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District shared their views with Alabama Daily News on what national security threats currently face the United States and how they would best address them if elected.
Republican Caroleene Dobson and Democrat Shomari Figures are running to represent what has become the state’s most-contested Congressional race this election after the district was redrawn last year.
‘The biggest threat to America and to the world is China’
When asked by ADN what she considered to be the single-largest national security threat to the United States, Dobson named Iran and Russia, but said she believed that China was far and above “the biggest threat to America and to the world.”
As to how to address what she argued to be the country’s largest national security threat, Dobson said it was a matter of bolstering the United States militarily and economically.
“We have to be strong when it comes to our military strength, our economy; the bad actors in the world are less likely to be aggressive – China’s less likely to be aggressive towards Taiwan, Russia with Ukraine, Iran with Israel – when we are strong economically and militarily,” Dobson said.
“The Chinese Navy is now larger than ours, and what we have here in District 2 can really ensure that we catch up, that we are once again strong militarily when it comes to our military assets.”
Dobson was referring to manufacturers that support the U.S. Military in District 2, such as Austal USA, located in Mobile, which builds ships for both the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, including littoral combat ships and expeditionary fast transports. There are other defense industries in the district, including a Lockheed Martin missile facility in Pike County.
She argued that the increased tensions worldwide between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Iran, and China and Taiwan could be traced back to President Joe Biden’s administration, which she called “disastrous.”
“We can trace some of this aggression that we have seen in the past three-and-a-half years to the weakness of the Biden-Harris administration; the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the stifling of American energy production,” she said.
In response, Dobson said if elected, she would advocate strongly for increasing American energy production, creating such an abundance as to weaken the positions of nations such as China or Russia that she described as “threats.”
“When it comes to our energy policy, we’ve seen the Biden-Harris-Figures administration literally hand China the keys to our energy future with the defacto EV mandate,” she said.
“We’ve made the entirety of Europe much more reliant on Russia for natural gas with the energy policies of this administration. So when we are not only energy independent, but energy dominant, which we have the capability of being, we make the world safer and a lot less reliant on China.”
Illegal immigration at the United States’ southern border, she argued, was also a major national security threat. Dobson said that on “day one,” she would work on legislation to both strengthen border security and incentivize legal immigration.
“It’s a national security issue, it’s a humanitarian issue,” she said. “I visited the border a couple months ago and witnessed firsthand the strain on resources when it comes to our cities, our small communities, our rural areas, and it’s also just the sheer number of noncitizens that have come across that are seeking our services.”
‘Bolstering and supporting our allies’
Figures said a terrorist attack carried out in the homeland posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security.
“I think the largest national security threat is and always will be the threat of attack from outside of the United States, and so we have to do everything that we can to support our national security agencies, to support intelligence agencies to make sure that we are best positioned to guard against such an attack,” Figures said.
“In over 20 years since 9/11, we need to make sure we don’t get hit with another one.”
Similar to Dobson, Figures also named illegal immigration as among the greatest national security threats facing the United States, and advocated strongly for immigration reform with a focus on addressing the root causes of illegal immigration, as well as bolstering resources for border patrol agents.
“Our border is a significant concern and presents some challenges to national security that we have to be serious about addressing,” he said.
“So reforming our immigration system and taking the steps necessary to implement policies that reduce the influx of people that we have at the borders, while also equipping our border patrol agents with the resources they need to be able to guard against people illegally crossing the border. (Also), identifying and compensating dangerous drugs like fentanyl and other illicit substances from crossing the border.”
As to the rising tensions across the globe, ADN asked Figures how, if elected, he would like to see the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, and the potential for conflict in Taiwan, addressed.
He suggested that understanding the geopolitical details of the conflicts, details that might not be fully apparent until becoming a member of Congress, would be the first step in responding to any conflict. Whatever the appropriate response is, however, he said the goal should be to bring “long-term solutions and peace.”
“You’ve first got to get in Congress and get an understanding of all the geopolitical factors that are leading to some of these conflicts; some are more complex than others, and so that’s where it starts,” Figures said.
“Beyond that, in Congress you have to advocate for and support policies that bolster the United States’ ability to lead in these conflicts in terms of seeking out resolution and long-term solutions and peace.”
In the intermediary, Figures did say that the United States’ allies should continue to be supported against countries he called “bad actors,” naming Iran, Russia and North Korea.
“So we, at the end of the day, have to take serious our responsibility to be a global leader in this space and lead from the front,” he said.
District 2 race
Both candidates have raised significant funding hauls in their respective campaigns.
As of mid-October and the latest campaign filings, Dobson had raised a total of $3.1 million in this election cycle, including a $1.68 million personal loan. As of Oct. 15, she’d spent $3 million and had $122,440 on hand.
Figures had raised $2.17 million since last year, including a $25,000 personal loan. As of mid-October his campaign had spent $1.7 million and he had $445,084 on hand.
Backed by the U.S. Supreme Court, a lower court’s decision to impose a new congressional map on the state came after it ruled that the state’s existing map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by lumping a disproportionate number of Black voters into a single district, District 7, and thereby diluted their voting power and congressional representation.
The map shakeup has made the race for District 2 among the most watched in the nation, particularly due to the pushback from some state leaders in response to the court-ordered map being imposed.
While the district now leans Democrat, political experts believe it to still be in play for Republicans, and say that Figures will likely have to win a sizable share of undecided voters to be able to turn the district blue.
The voter registration deadline has already passed on Oct. 21, and the last day to apply for an absentee ballot by mail is today, or Thursday if done in person. The general election is on Tuesday, Nov. 5.