MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Candidates for Congress in Alabama’s 2nd District offered contrasting visions for the future during appearances on Capitol Journal Friday.
It’s Alabama’s first genuinely competitive general election for Congress in more than 10 years. And it’s of national significance, with control of the House of Representatives likely decided by a handful of House races throughout the country.
Watch the full interviews below.
Republican candidate Caroleene Dobson criticized Democrats’ stances on immigration, abortion and inflation. Speaking in support of Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, Dobson said that a Democratic presidential victory would be worse for Alabama.
“(Presumed Democrat nominee Kamala Harris) claimed that she would expand Bidenomics, and again, further throw our country into even worse inflation,” Dobson said. “She’s also committed to banning fracking, which again, would diminish our ability to be not only energy independent, but energy dominant, and would have a direct impact on further increasing prices for the average American.”
If elected, and the House of Representatives stays a Republican majority and Trump wins the presidency, Dobson said she thinks more effort could be made to make America energy dominant.
While Dobson mentioned immigration as an important issue for AL-2 voters in her interview, Democratic candidate Shomari Figures said that voters he has spoken to have not mentioned immigration as a concern.
“The voters that we talked to, they wanted to make this race about making sure that women have the right to make their own health care decisions over their bodies,” Figures said. “They wanted to talk about how we can actually get more infrastructure investments in this district. They wanted to talk about what we can do to improve life outcomes for people in this district and expand Medicaid in this district.”
Despite the differing concerns over immigration, Figures said voters were also concerned about inflation. He said he wants to do what he can within the realm of the federal government to address it.
“In Congress, I’m going to go to work every single day to make sure that we are maximizing what the federal government can do to keep prices down where we can,” he said. “I think a lot of that starts with prioritizing American jobs, making sure that we’re bringing higher paying jobs here, making sure that we are doing everything that we can to incentivize and restart American manufacturing, or get American manufacturing back to the way it was, and not doing the things that we know are going to continue to drive prices up.”
The district was drawn in 2021 by lawmakers to have a black population of around 30%, but was redrawn last year by a federal court to have a black population of about 49%. Past election data shows that with the district’s current makeup, a black-preffered candidate would have won in 15 of the past 17 election contests.
More on Dobson and Figures’ campaign issues can be found on their respective websites.