U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham and Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York; Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Shomari Figures, the Democratic nominee for Alabana’s 2nd Congressional District, stand at Rosa Parks statue in Montgomery, Alabama on Oct. 31 2024. The seat is the Democrats’ best pick-up opportunity in Alabama this year. (Jemma Stephenson/ Alabama Reflector)
U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Thursday urged Montgomery voters to support Democratic Alabama 2nd Congressional District candidate Shomari Figures in another sign of national Democrats’ interest in a seat that could determine control of Congress.
Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, joined Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed; U.S. House Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham; and Figures at the statue of Rosa Parks in downtown Montgomery to encourage support for Figures and the Democratic presidential ticket.
Jeffries invoked Montgomery’s role in civil rights history, including the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March, which led to passage of the Voting Rights Act that year. Jeffries said that Montgomery and this congressional seat could “really play a decisive role” determining which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.
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“We’re urging everyone to make sure that you exercise your precious and sacred right to vote,” he said. “Voting is as American as baseball, motherhood, apple pie, Rosa Parks, Dr. King and John Lewis.”
Democrats only need to gain four seats in the House to take control of the chamber. Jeffries, who said extremists in the country had adopted voter suppression as an electoral strategy, said a Democratic majority in the chamber would prioritize voting rights.
“That’s why one of the first things that we will do in the new Congress under House Democratic leadership, with Shomari Figures there in the chamber, and Terri Sewell leading the charge, is to pass the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so we can end the era of voter suppression in America once and for all,” he said.
The bill, sponsored by Sewell in the past, would among other provisions restore a preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring states with histories of voter discrimination, such as Alabama, to submit election law changes for approval to the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the provision in Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 case out of Shelby County.
A federal court in 2022 ordered Alabama to draw new congressional lines, ruling that racial polarization in the state electorate — where white Alabamians tend to vote Republican and Black Alabamians tend to vote Democratic — made it difficult for Black Alabamians to elect their preferred leaders.
The Alabama Legislature drew a map the following year that the court found unacceptable, and appointed a third party to redo the lines. The newly-drawn 2nd Congressional District, encompassing Montgomery, parts of Mobile and most of the southern Black Belt. The district has a Black Voting Age Population (BVAP) of 48.7%.
Sewell, whose 7th Congressional District included parts of Montgomery before being redrawn, said that the redrawn maps were about fairness and providing adequate representation for Black Alabamians, who make up about 27% of the state population.
“There’s seven members of Congress and only one seat where there’s even a possibility that African Americans from Alabama can actually choose a candidate, and so this is really about fairness, but we have to win this seat,” she said. “It is an opportunity seat, but we have to win this seat.”
Figures said that winning the seat would bring Sewell to leadership in the House on the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful in the chamber, which would benefit the state. He also said that was work to be done with closing hospitals in the state.
“This is a very important seat, not just for purposes of who controls the House but for America, because America owes Montgomery, as I’ve said, in a different type of way than it owes other cities across this country,” he said.
Figures, who has had Eric Holder in Mobile and a panel with U.S. House Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, in Montgomery earlier this week, said that every county was important for running, and the rural counties make up around a third of the voters.
Barber shop
At an event later in the day at Heritage Barber & Style Shop, Figures, Reed and Jeffries were joined by state lawmakers Rep. Kenyatté Hassell, D-Montgomery, and Sen. Kirk Hatcher, D-Montgomery.
The panel discussed the role that the barbershop plays in the Black community and pushed back against the narrative that Black men were not supporting Harris.
Hatcher said he did not want to go back to a former President Donald Trump presidency. The senator cited the fact that between 1870 and 1901, the South elected 20 Black men and two senators to Congress. But after Jim Crow took effect, there were no Black members of Congress between 1901 and 1929, and none were elected from Deep South states again until 1972. Jeremiah Haralson, a Black congressman from Selma, left office in 1877. Alabama did not elect another Black person to Congress until 1992.
“The counter-revolution from the South and the bloody Southern Redemption obliterated Black representation in Congress for more than 100 years,” he said,
Jeffries also spoke about economic issues and said that, after Reconstruction, there was an era of economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, small business ownership and African American controlled financial institutions but some of that has been lost over time. He said Harris had a plan for entrepreneurship, home ownership and access to capital.
“When you ask folks for a definition of what politics represents, and you’ll get a whole host of answers, right? Some about just the glorious ideas connected to democracy,” he said. “Others will say they’re all crooks, lies and frauds, right? And then you get all kind of answers in between, but fundamentally, right, what politics represents is the management of public money.”
Shop owner Vladimir Averett said that he had heard about Black men not supporting Harris, so he reached out to host the event.
“I thought it was being great for them to have it at a barber shop, but you can get Black men and they can be here to listen, and they can understand what’s really going on in the election process,” he said.
Rev. Ronald Davis, who was in attendance, said barber shops contained a range of opinions.
“I believe that, if the Supreme Court deemed that we ought to have another Black representative then we as African Americans ought to make that happen,” he said.
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