The names on the March 26 special general election in Alabama State House District 10 should look familiar to many voters.
Democrat Marilyn Lands ran for the seat in 2022 and won 45% of the vote in the Madison County district.
Republican Teddy Powell is in his second term on the Madison City Council.
Both candidates know turning out voters next week is key in the rare purple district. Theirs is the only race on the ballot and voters in the south Madison County district have already been to the polls once or twice this year. Besides the March 5 primary, the special election in State Senate District 9, which overlaps slightly part of House District 10, was in January.
The special election was needed because former Rep. David Cole, R-Madison, who defeated Lands two years ago, had to resign the seat last fall after entering a plea deal on a felony voter fraud charge. His residency had been in question when he ran for the open seat and was the subject of both a party and court challenge.
Before Cole, former Rep Mike Ball, R-Madison, held the seat for several terms. He’s endorsed Lands, as has former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones.
Powell has received some significant endorsements from Montgomery based groups, including the Business Council of Alabama and the Alabama Farmers Federation.
Lands
When Lands ran in 2022, her campaign was largely focused on education, health care and mental health care — she is a licensed professional counselor — and economic wellbeing for all. She advocated for eliminating the sales tax on groceries.
“And when Roe v. Wade got overturned (in June 2022), that of course became one of the issues we focused on,” Lands said. “Now, it’s become the heart of the campaign.”
In February, Lands released a campaign video featuring an Alabama couple who had to travel out of the state for an abortion after genetic testing showed their baby had trisomy 18, a condition that causes significant physical growth delays during fetal development and multiple birth defects. It often results in stillbirths.
In the video, Lands shares her family had a similar diagnosis two decades ago. She calls that loss a “powerful sorrow,” but she was able to get an abortion nearby.
“It just seemed unbelievable to me that 20 years ago I was able to get the care I needed right here, in my own hospital with my own doctor, and Alyssa and her family had to make a horrific journey,” Lands told Alabama Daily News.
“To think that we’ve gone backward and not forward; it’s just unacceptable.”
She thinks stories like hers and Alyssa Gonzales’ can help “change hearts and minds” about Alabama’s near-total ban on abortions.
“We have to overturn this bad ban on abortions,” she said.
Lands also wants to see the Legislature quickly pass legislation filed by Democrats earlier this month to protect access to contraceptives.
Reproductive rights is an issue that Lands thinks will resonate with HD10 voters.
“I think we can send a real message for change,” she said. “I believe it has to start somewhere and it’s going to start on March 26.”
Lands has raised nearly $158,000 in what she calls a grassroots campaign, almost all of it from individuals in small amounts.
Meanwhile, those issues Lands was discussing two years ago are still there, she says. She said HD10 is a complicated district, including some of the city of Madison, the city of Triana, southwest Huntsville and Redstone Arsenal and some unincorporated parts of the county.
“It’s a lot of different communities that may have different concerns,” Lands said. “But they all have the same big ones — education and health care. Because I’ve lived here all my life, I understand the complexities of these communities.”
Powell
After seven years on the Madison City Council, Powell said the House of Representatives is a natural progression. The growing district needs strong representation, he said. While the district is a mix of Republicans and Democrats, he said all residents have similar goals.
“Everybody wants the same thing,” Powell said. “We want our families taken care of. We want a good economy, we want infrastructure, we want a good education. And those are things that I’ve worked on in the past with people (with) different opinions.”
Powell left his civilian position as a budget analyst with the U.S. Department of Defense to run in HD10.
“I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to be able to stop what I was doing to go serve and I want to do that,” Powell said.
While the district is purple, the House of Representatives is solid red with a GOP supermajority, he said.
“If you can’t get things through the House, you can’t represent the people,” Powell said.
His legislative priorities include infrastructure for the rapidly growing Madison County.
Powell’s raised $103,000 for his campaign, including a $20,000 personal loan and several donations from Montgomery political action committees. Two weeks before the election, he still had most of that money available.
“We’ve intentionally held out some of our funds to get out to vote; we think that’s going to be what’s key for us to win,” he said. “We know we have the largest number of voters, but we have to get those voters off the couch and out to vote.”
Powell has three adult children starting their careers.
“I want to make sure that Alabama is a great place and all my kids stay here and I don’t have to travel across the country to see them,” he said about his motivation for running. “It’s about family.”
As he’s looking out for his family through good policies, he’ll be looking out for other people’s too, he said.
“I’m tired of politics as usual, and we just really want to get things done,” he said. “And the way to get things done are to make sure that our families are educated and we have to make sure that we’re taking care of infrastructure because infrastructure brings economic development.”
He said that that trifecta — education, infrastructure and economic development — is working well in Madison County, and he’d like to see it duplicated in other parts of the state.