Washington is paying for a candidate who can't find the district
Figures is a hand-picked project of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the national party's House campaign arm in Washington. The DCCC placed him in its "Red to Blue" program — by its own description, money, fundraising muscle, paid staff, and strategic direction from the capital — and its chair, a congresswoman from Washington State, calls flipping District 2 part of taking back the House majority. In the 48 hours after the Supreme Court upheld Alabama's map on June 2, the DCCC said it raised roughly half a million dollars off the ruling. The Wiregrass deserves a representative who answers to the Wiregrass, not one whose paycheck and marching orders come from a committee 900 miles away.
Why Figures is beatable now
With Mobile out, the district's Black voting-age population falls from 48.7 percent to 39.9 percent and the seat absorbs more of the Republican-leaning Wiregrass. National money can buy ads; it cannot redraw the district back the way he wants it.
One vote that tells the story
On H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, Figures voted no, siding with his national party. In California, where those politics run the show, a biological-male athlete won girls' titles at the state high school track championships and officials printed duplicate medals and added shared first-place podium spots for the girls he beat - the model H.R. 28 was written to stop, and the model Figures voted to protect.
The challenger field
Six Republicans qualified for the August 11 winner-take-all special primary: Hampton Harris, State Rep. Rhett Marques, Christian Horn, David Matthews, Joshua McKee, and James Richardson. We take no side among them.
Key dates
August 11 — AL-02 special primary, winner-take-all with no runoff. November 3 — general election.
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