Shomari Figures fights to hold redrawn Alabama House seat against Rhett Marques

Ad spending neared $10 million as Democrats outspent Republicans in the district

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures is campaigning to keep the Alabama seat he won two years ago — one of only two in the state represented by a Democrat — after the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature redrew the 2nd Congressional District to make it easier for the GOP to win. His race against Rhett Marques, a state lawmaker endorsed by President Donald Trump, is drawing national attention as a potential sign of trouble for Republicans as they try to hold their congressional majorities.

Figures was one of several Black members of Congress who saw their districts redrawn. His campaign has taken him to Black voters in cities such as Montgomery and Tuskegee, both steeped in the nation’s civil rights struggle, and into deep conservative territory, where he presses voters’ concerns over rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer.

“We know that the deck has been stacked. We know that the rules have been changed in the middle of the game, but we know what we’ve got to do,” Figures told a cheering crowd recently in Montgomery. “All we’ve got to do is show up. All we’ve got to do is show out. All we’ve got to do is fight.”

Figures won the seat in 2024 after a federal court ordered new districts, ruling that the Legislature had unlawfully diluted the voting power of Black residents. Alabama is 27% Black and holds seven U.S. House seats, and with Figures’ victory the state added a second Black member of Congress for the first time in its history, aligning its representation with its demographics. A Supreme Court decision last term paved the way for new lines, and the map in use on Election Day reduces the Black voting-age population in his district from 48% to 40%. Trump carried the area within the new district by 14 percentage points two years ago.

Television advertising in the district has gone from almost nothing to nearly $10 million in the past seven weeks, according to AdImpact, with Democratic groups outspending Republicans. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., campaigned with Figures and said the Alabama election is an opportunity to send a message on voting rights. “The people of Alabama have a chance again to say this is a moral moment — not on my watch,” Booker said during the stop. “I will not stay seated while you try to take away our power.”

Some Black voters say they see echoes of the state’s Jim Crow past in the redraw. “I’m 75, and history is repeating itself,” said Francis Fanning, a retired substitute teacher in Montgomery. Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who lives in Montgomery, was 8 in 1965 when she and other voting rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement in Selma. “Much blood, sweat and tears was shed in an effort for African Americans to gain their right to vote,” she said, recalling a feeling of excitement when Figures was elected two years ago. “It’s very sad that we are in this place,” she said. “But we still got to continue just as we did back in the ’60s. Lift our voices, because we always keep hope alive.”

For Republicans, the new lines are about reclaiming a district that was reliably Republican before the federal court altered it. “We have an opportunity to not only flip a seat from Democrat back to Republican here in Alabama, but to also hold the majority in the House with a win,” Marques said. He points to a legislative record that includes support for school choice and law enforcement and for restrictions on transgender athletes’ participation in girls sports and on gender-affirming care for minors, and said he is more aligned with “the Alabama values in this district.”

Marques has deep ties to the district’s heavily Republican areas, where he served on the Enterprise City Council and ran an automotive store for decades. He acknowledged voter concerns about affordability but blamed the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden. Coffee County Sheriff Scott Byrd, who appeared with Marques at an event with local law enforcement officials, said, “I know his values and I trust him.”

Republicans say they are optimistic about reclaiming the seat but have expressed concern about the potential for lackluster turnout as Figures mounts an aggressive campaign. Marques said he expects to prevail “if the Republicans and the people who believe in freedom” go vote. U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said at a campaign event for Marques in Dothan that the district is one of three dozen swing seats that will determine control of Congress. “This seat absolutely will have a larger say on the direction of the country. Do we want conservative policies that are rooted in common sense, or do you want far-left socialists?” Scalise said.

Figures calls affordability the overriding issue facing all voters, from grocery and gas prices to farmers’ high fertilizer costs. “The cost of living in this country is getting out of control. And we don’t come from a district or a state where people have the means to just continue to pump out money for $4 a gallon for gas or $8 for ground beef,” he said. He often notes that the median individual income in Alabama is $34,000 and that residents struggle with access to hospitals and health care. Nationally, households’ median expectation for inflation over the coming year stood at 4.6% as of late October, exceeding the 3.9% median wage growth the Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker measured for continuously employed workers, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).

Figures frames the race as a choice between “someone with a record of serving the people” and someone there to serve a president. On an October weekend, his schedule included greeting voters at the annual Boll Weevil Fall Festival in Enterprise, a predominantly white city of about 31,000 whose festival is named for the cotton-destroying insect that pushed the community into more prosperous peanut farming a century ago. The next day, he made a string of appearances at largely Black churches in nearby Dothan, urging people to vote.

The district was never drawn as a majority-Black seat — Figures often notes it was initially split evenly between Black and white voters. Speaking at Greater Beulah Baptist Church, a predominantly Black congregation in strongly Republican Houston County, he said the reconfigured lines make it more difficult for “somebody who looks like me” to win, but not impossible. “Even though they are changing district lines, we still have the right to show up and make our voices heard,” he said.