Sunday, May 17 — The only dialysis center in Macon County shuts its doors for good

Today — the deadline he negotiated arrives

Sunday, May 17. Today. The Fresenius Kidney Care dialysis center on East Martin Luther King Highway in Tuskegee closes permanently. Roughly fifty patients lose the place they go three times a week to stay alive. The nearest remaining facilities are in Tallassee, Auburn, and Union Springs — thirty to fifty miles each way, three times a week.

The closure date is the deadline Rep. Figures himself negotiated with Fresenius corporate in March. His office announced it on March 18 in a press release from Washington. That release contained the "tremendous gap" framing. It said the office would "continue to explore long-term solutions for dialysis treatment."

Today is day sixty since that release. There has been no public follow-up. No new statement. No Tuskegee site visit on the public record. No companion bill. No committee hearing. No appropriations request specifically addressing the closure. The press release stood. The deadline arrived. The deadline is today.

Macon County stays in District 2 under both the court-drawn map and the 2023 map that the Supreme Court reinstated on Monday. Whichever way the litigation runs from here, the dialysis patients are District 2 voters. They will remember who showed up. They will remember who did not.

This is the fact to carry into church this morning, into county meetings tonight, into every conversation this week. Closure day. Sixty days of silence. The deadline he negotiated. The follow-up he never made.

Two Columns — what he said, what he did

Here is the Court-Appointed Incumbent's public record on the Tuskegee closure, set against the public record of his actions in the same window. One column is words. The other is what the words produced.

What Figures said

What Figures did

March 18 press release from Washington: "The people in Tuskegee who need dialysis cannot afford to miss a treatment or travel long distances multiple times a week."

Did not visit the Tuskegee facility. No public site visit on record between March 18 and the closure today.

Same press release: "This will leave a tremendous gap in the health care system in Macon County."

Did not introduce companion legislation for a successor dialysis provider in Macon County. Did not request a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing.

Same press release: "We will continue to explore long-term solutions for dialysis treatment."

Did not publicly identify a single long-term solution between March 18 and today. Did not name a successor operator. Did not request federal capital assistance.

May 7 town hall in Montgomery on redistricting: "Your voice is on the line."

Held the town hall in Montgomery on a topic that affects his political future. Did not hold a town hall in Tuskegee on a topic that affects his constituents' lives.

May 11 statement after SCOTUS: "I ran for this seat to be a voice for all of Alabama."

Told Lagniappe Mobile on May 13 he has not decided whether to run in District 2 or District 1. The voice has not committed to which district it represents.

May 11 statement: "The fight must and will go on."

Filed no public action on the Tuskegee closure between his press release on March 18 and the closure itself on May 17. Sixty days, no fight on this one.

One side of this table is a campaign. The other side is a job. Voters in District 2 deserve a representative who treats them as the second column, not the first.

The parallel case — Wilcox County

The Tuskegee closure is not an isolated story. Fresenius announced on February 24 that it would also close the Wilcox County dialysis center — the only such facility in Wilcox County. That facility shut on its original schedule on March 20. Wilcox is in District 7, represented by Terri Sewell. No public Sewell follow-up either.

Two rural Alabama counties lose their only dialysis center inside the same three-month window. The two Democratic incumbents who represent the affected patients have issued one press release between them on the subject — from Washington, on March 18. Wilcox closed on time. Tuskegee closes today.

The lesson is structural and easy to carry: press releases from Washington do not keep facilities open in rural Alabama. The District 2 representative who replaces the Court-Appointed Incumbent has to do the job from the district, not from a Beltway office, and has to spend the first six months building the federal-state-local pipeline that brings a successor dialysis operator into Macon County. That is the work. That is the contrast.

What this week looks like for the District 2 race

Two days from now, on Tuesday May 19, the regular Alabama primary runs. Hampton Harris is the uncontested Republican nominee for AL-02 in that primary. Two days later, on Wednesday May 20, the special-primary qualifying window opens for the August 11 special primary triggered by Monday's Supreme Court vacatur. That window closes Friday May 22 at 5:00 PM. Five business days.

Three Republicans have publicly committed to AL-02 for August 11 so far: Hampton Harris — the only one who held this district as a primary objective before Monday's ruling — plus State Rep. Rhett Marques of Enterprise, who switched from AL-01 on May 11, and Joshua McKee of Robertsdale in Baldwin County, who switched from AL-01 on May 12. Coffee County (Marques' base) is inside AL-02 under the 2023 map. Baldwin County (McKee's base) is not.

Meanwhile, the Court-Appointed Incumbent told Lagniappe Mobile on Wednesday that he has not decided whether he will seek re-election along Alabama's Gulf Coast or in its Wiregrass region. His campaign told the same paper: "The Supreme Court did not dismiss the case, so we still do not know what the district lines will ultimately be."

The choice he is studying is which district to run in. The choice his constituents are making today is which next nearest center can keep them alive.

The litigation that will not save him

The three-judge panel in the Northern District of Alabama received both sides' briefs on Friday May 15 in the Singleton and ACLU plaintiffs' temporary restraining order motion. The panel has not ruled. Alabama Reflector reported Saturday that further proceedings are expected next week. State-court challenges under Amendment 4 — the 2022 ratified constitutional rule against election-law changes within six months of an election — have been signaled by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton and Rep. Napoleon Bracy but not yet filed.

The clock is running on three tracks at once. Monday is the SCOTUS-reinstated 2023 map. The federal TRO motion is pending in front of three judges. The state Amendment 4 case has not been filed. None of these tracks change the basic fact that today the dialysis center in Tuskegee closes and the man who told the people of Tuskegee in March that he would "explore long-term solutions" has produced none.

Three town hall topics the people of Macon County actually need

"Where I Was for Sixty Days." — A site visit at the Tuskegee Fresenius facility on or before the closure date. Held instead in Washington. Press release from Washington. Sixty days.

"The Long-Term Solution I Mentioned in March." — The specific operator, the specific federal financing mechanism, the specific timeline. Words from the March 18 press release. Specifics: none.

"Which District I Am Choosing to Represent." — Mobile or Wiregrass. The choice he has not made. The choice his constituents would like settled before the Supreme Court resets his political horizon for him.

The road to Nov. 3 — calendar going forward

Today, May 17.

Tuskegee Fresenius closes. Sixty days since the last public statement from Figures on that closure.

Tuesday, May 19.

Regular Alabama primary. Hampton Harris is the uncontested Republican nominee for AL-02. Polls open 7 AM to 7 PM CT.

Wednesday, May 20.

Special-primary major-party qualifying window opens.

Friday, May 22.

Special-primary major-party qualifying window closes, 5:00 PM CT.

Tuesday, August 11.

Special primary for AL-01, AL-02, AL-06, AL-07. No runoff.

Tuesday, November 3.

General Election. 170 days from today.

Closing

The Court-Appointed Incumbent is the only candidate in this race whose closing argument is about which district he wants. Hampton Harris is the only Republican candidate whose closing argument is the same as the job he has been preparing to do all year: represent the District 2 he has spent the past year building infrastructure to serve. The Tuskegee Fresenius patients walking out of an empty facility today are not voters in a hypothetical map. They are voters in a real one. They will remember who showed up. The deadline arrived today.