The Alabama Senate chamber on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Gov, Kay Ivey Tuesday called a special election for the north central Alabama Senate seat of outgoing Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed, R-Jasper. (Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector)
Gov. Kay Ivey Tuesday set an election for outgoing Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed’s Senate seat just west of Birmingham.
The primaries for Reed’s seat will take place on March 11. Runoffs for party nominations, if necessary, will take place on April 8, with a general election on June 24.
Candidates for the seat must qualify by Jan. 7.
Reed, a Republican from Jasper, announced in November that he would step down to become Ivey’s senior advisor to workforce transformation, focusing on economic development and raising Alabama’s workforce participation rate, which has trailed the nation’s for nearly 50 years. The state’s participation rate in November was 57.6%, according to the Alabama Department of Labor. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the national workforce participation rate that month was 62.5%.
Senate Republicans nominated Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, to succeed Reed as Senate President Pro Tem earlier this month. Gudger’s election is all but certain, as Republicans hold 26 of the 34 seats currently occupied in the chamber.
Senate District 5 extends west from the Mississippi border through north central Alabama and into Jefferson County. It includes all of Fayette, Lamar and Walker counties and also takes in a portion of Tuscaloosa County.
The seat is likely to be solidly Republican. Reed took 73% of the vote in the district when he was first elected in 2010. He faced no opposition in any subsequent general election for the seat.
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