Thursday, May 21 — Hampton Harris filed when this district was still the long road

TOMORROW AT 5 PM THE FIELD IS SET

The August 11 special-primary qualifying window opened Wednesday morning at 8:30 AM Central. It closes Friday at 5:00 PM Central. After Friday, no candidate joins the Republican field. After Friday, no candidate leaves. The field is the field for eighty-two days of voter contact.

Republicans publicly committed to AL-02 as of this morning:

- Hampton Harris — the first-mover in this district. The Republican who built infrastructure for District 2 before the Supreme Court made District 2 the contested seat. The only candidate in the field who did not need a map change to know where he was running. - State Rep. Rhett Marques (HD-91, Enterprise) — suspended his AL-01 campaign on May 11 and filed in AL-02. Coffee County, his HD-91 base, is inside AL-02 under the 2023 map. Endorsed by U.S. Senator Katie Britt. - Joshua McKee (Robertsdale, Baldwin County) — retired U.S. Army Green Beret. Suspended his AL-01 campaign on May 12, twenty-four hours after the Supreme Court ruled, and filed in AL-02. He is from a county whose precincts lie on the AL-01 side of the 2023 map but chose to run in the seat where the open lane is.

Two of the three Republicans in this race did not list District 2 as their objective until the map ruling changed their calculation. The third did.

DAY 64 — THE SILENCE IS NOW A RECORD

Sunday May 17 the Fresenius Kidney Care center on East Martin Luther King Highway in Tuskegee closed permanently. Four days have now passed. Roughly fifty Macon County dialysis patients are driving thirty miles round trip, three times each week, to Tallassee or Auburn or Union Springs to keep blood toxins from killing them.

The figures.house.gov press releases page this morning carries no closure-day statement. None on Sunday. None Monday. None Tuesday. None Wednesday. The most recent statement on this closure remains the press release out of Washington dated March 18 — sixty-four days ago, before the closure happened, when there was still time to do something about it.

What has been issued on the closure since: - No federal legislation introduced on rural dialysis access. - No federal appropriations request named publicly. - No site visit to Tuskegee on the public record — not before the closure, not on the day of the closure, not in the four days since. - No town hall in Tuskegee. - No successor operator publicly identified.

>> Day 64. The patients are still on the road. The follow-up has still not arrived. <<

TWO COLUMNS — WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT DISTRICT 2 / WHAT HE IS DOING FOR DISTRICT 2

| What He Says | What He Is Doing |

|-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | March 18: "The people in Tuskegee who need dialysis | Day 64. No public site visit on the day the facility closed. | | cannot afford to miss a treatment or travel long | None in the four days since. | | distances multiple times a week." | | |-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | March 18: "We will continue to explore long-term | Day 64. No successor operator publicly named. No federal | | solutions for dialysis treatment." | bill introduced. The patients have already left the facility.| |-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | May 7 Montgomery town hall: "Your voice is on the line." | Town hall held in Montgomery on the redistricting question | | | that affects his political future. No town hall in Tuskegee | | | on the closure that affects his constituents' lives. | |-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | May 11: "I ran for this seat to be a voice for all of | Told Lagniappe Mobile in the same week he has not decided | | Alabama." | whether to run for District 2 or District 1 under new map. | |-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | May 11: "The fight must and will go on." | The fight he is publicly engaged in is over which map | | | applies on August 11. The fight he is not publicly engaged | | | in is the one for the dialysis patients on the road today. | |-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | This week: the campaign question about which district | This week: the survival question for fifty Macon County | | he wants to represent. | patients about how to get to a treatment center. |

One column is a campaign about a seat. The other column is the job inside the seat. District 2 is owed the second column, not the first.

THE UNDECIDED INCUMBENT

The Court-Appointed Incumbent told Lagniappe Mobile (May 14) that he was "staying in AL-2, for now." That "for now" is still the public record. With qualifying closing tomorrow at 5 PM Central, that "for now" is a thirty-hour question.

If he files for AL-02, he asks Macon County to send him back to the same office where the dialysis silence has run sixty-four days. If he files for AL-01, he asks the Republican voter in Mobile and Baldwin to choose between him and Barry Moore. If he files for nothing, the question of what he ran for in the first place gets louder.

What he has done publicly between May 11 and today: issued the redistricting statement, attended the Montgomery town hall, given the Lagniappe interview, said the fight will go on. What he has not done: visit Tuskegee. Name his district. Name a successor operator. Introduce legislation. Hold a town hall in Macon County.

THE KITCHEN-TABLE COST

Brent crude settled near $107 per barrel Wednesday after a two-session pullback on reports of progress in U.S.-Iran negotiations. Even at $107, Brent is roughly fifty percent above where it was sixty days ago. The Strait of Hormuz remains partially restricted; three supertankers transited Wednesday, the first commercial through-traffic in weeks. The International Energy Agency warns the global oil market will stay materially undersupplied through October even if a deal closes next month.

What the District 2 family is paying for in the same news cycle: - The dialysis patient driving three round trips a week to Tallassee at fuel prices fifty percent above where they were in March. - The retiree on a fixed income opening a power bill that reflects industry input costs that climbed every week of April and most of May. - The family with one car and a job thirty miles away spending more in fuel each week than the increase in any federal transfer they receive.

Every fuel-cost increase is a tax on the rural Alabama family the District 2 seat is supposed to represent. The incumbent does not control the oil price. He does control what the office in his name is doing about the squeeze it is putting on the people he represents. The public record of that office on the squeeze is the same as the public record on the dialysis closure.

THE LITIGATION IS A CAMPAIGN. THE SEAT IS THE JOB.

The Singleton and ACLU temporary restraining order motion remains in front of the three-judge federal panel in the Northern District of Alabama. Both sides briefed on or before Friday May 15. No ruling has issued. State-court Amendment 4 challenges — under the 2022 ratified rule barring election-law changes within six months of an election — have been signaled by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton and Rep. Napoleon Bracy. As of this morning, not filed.

None of that puts the Tuskegee Fresenius back on its lights. The litigation is a campaign about which map governs August 11. It does not produce a successor dialysis operator. The patients who left a facility on Sunday do not come back to one because a federal panel reads a brief.

WHAT THE DISTRICT 2 VOTER DOES THIS WEEK

WATCH FRIDAY AT 5 PM. Qualifying closes. The Republican field for August 11 is final. Saturday morning the news cycle pivots to who is in the race and who is not.

READ WHAT THE INCUMBENT FILES, OR DOES NOT. The same Friday 5 PM deadline applies to him. Thirty hours from now we know whether he runs in District 2, District 1, or neither.

CARRY THE TUSKEGEE FACT. Day 64. The facility closed Sunday. No closure-day statement. No site visit. No successor operator named. The patients are on the road every other day this week.

TELL YOUR NEIGHBOR WHO HAMPTON HARRIS IS. He filed when District 2 was still the long road. He built the infrastructure before the Supreme Court ruled the infrastructure necessary. He did not need the map to change to know where the job was.

CLOSING

The Court-Appointed Incumbent has thirty hours to decide which district he wants to represent. The voter in Tuskegee has the rest of the week to keep getting to dialysis. The voter in Mobile has the same week to figure out whether the seat representing the city is going to be represented by the man who has held it eighteen months and just took eleven days to tell Lagniappe he had not decided what he was doing with it. Day 64. Friday 5 PM. The clock is running on both.

--