They Just Took a Seat From One of Their Own. Our Congressman Has Nothing to Say.

Wall of Shame — Today: Austal USA

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Austal USA PAC (Mobile) has put $2,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted to halt Operation Epic Fury — while Austal-built Navy ships were deployed to the Persian Gulf. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

AND THE SENATE NOMINATION WENT THE SAME DIRECTION

El-Sayed beat Haley Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, by about a point. The Associated Press called it Wednesday morning with ninety-nine percent counted. Stevens conceded and endorsed him.

Fox News described him as a far-left figure backed by progressive champions and socialists, among them Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That is Fox's language, not ours.

Here is what he ran on. Medicare for All. Abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ending military aid to Israel, whose conduct in Gaza he has called genocide. Refusing PAC money altogether.

Here is what he beat. The governor of Michigan. The retiring senator whose seat it is. The Senate Democratic leader. And by his own count seventy million dollars of outside money — a spending disadvantage of better than eight to one. His line on election night was that the power of their many beat the power of that money.

Michigan is a state Donald Trump carried in 2024.

Kamala Harris is now raising money for him.

THE MAN WHO REPRESENTS US HAS NOT SAID A WORD

We have looked. His campaign accounts, his congressional accounts, his official releases, and the Alabama coverage since Tuesday night.

Nothing.

The Democratic Party nominated a candidate for the United States Senate who wants to abolish ICE and end aid to Israel, and put out one of its own incumbent congressmen in favor of a democratic socialist, on the same night, in a state that voted for President Trump. Every Democrat in the country with an opinion has offered one. Shomari Figures is quiet as a church mouse.

We are not going to pretend to know why. We will observe that there are only two reasons a politician says nothing about the direction of his own party.

Either he does not object to it. Or he does object, and would rather the people who fund him and the people who vote in his primaries never find out.

Neither one is good for the Second District.

HE VOTES WITH THEM EIGHTY-TWO TIMES OUT OF EIGHTY-FOUR

The record has not moved and will not move. Roll Call 200 through Roll Call 283 — every recorded vote he cast between June 3 and July 23, eighty-four of them, from the House Clerk.

He broke with his party twice.

Eighty-two times out of eighty-four he voted with the caucus. That is the caucus that on Tuesday night handed a Senate nomination to a man Fox News calls far-left, and took a seat away from one of its own incumbents to give it to a democratic socialist.

The question on a ballot is never whether a man agrees with every plank of anything. It is which direction his votes push, and whose majority he is building. Eighty-two out of eighty-four answers it.

THE TWO EXCEPTIONS, AND WHEN THEY LANDED

Ninety seconds apart.

July 21, 9:46 p.m., Roll Call 267. Mace of South Carolina, Part A Amendment No. 19 to the defense bill. Agreed to, 219 to 208. Republicans for it, 213 to 1. Democrats against it, 5 to 207.

July 21, 9:48 p.m., Roll Call 268. Mace Part A Amendment No. 20. Agreed to, 221 to 203. Republicans, 215 to nothing. Democrats, 5 to 203.

The same five Democrats voted yes both times: Cuellar of Texas, Davis of North Carolina, Gonzalez of Texas, Terri Sewell of Alabama, and Shomari Figures. Hakeem Jeffries and the whole of Democratic leadership voted no. The subject was barring biological males from women's athletics in Defense Department schools.

Now put the sequence beside it.

On January 14, 2025, the House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, 218 to 206. Figures voted no, and posted a statement the same day explaining why. It is still on his congressional website.

June 2, 2026 — the Supreme Court let Alabama use its 2023 map. The Second District stopped being a seat drawn to elect him and became a seat that voted for Donald Trump by fourteen points.

The week of July 13 — the National Republican Congressional Committee added him to its target list.

July 21, 9:46 and 9:48 p.m. — the only two votes all summer on which he left his party.

Take him at his word that the belief never changed. Then the only question left is what did.

THE RECORD IS CLOSED, AND IT IS A NOVEMBER ARGUMENT

The House is in a district work period. The last recorded vote is Roll Call 283, July 23. Whatever his record in this Congress was going to be, it already is.

Be clear about what that record is for. Shomari Figures is not on the ballot next Tuesday. He has no primary. Not one vote cast on August 11 is cast for him or against him. Anybody who tells you next week is a referendum on this congressman is selling you something.

His record is a November argument. Eighty-four votes, two breaks, a party being remade around him while he says nothing about it — that is what he answers for on November 3, and not one day sooner.

FIVE DAYS, AND THE ABSENTEE DOOR IS CLOSING

So what is next Tuesday for?

It is the vote that decides who spends the next twelve weeks putting all of the above to him — in debates, in mailboxes, on television, and on a ballot in November.

Five days from today, Republicans in Alabama's Second District pick that person. There is no runoff. Whoever finishes first is the nominee, and from Wednesday morning he is the only one who gets to make this case.

Today, Thursday August 6, is the last day an absentee ballot application can be hand-delivered to your county Absentee Election Manager. The mail deadline has passed.

Monday, August 10 — last day to hand-return a completed absentee ballot, by close of business.

Tuesday, August 11 — polls open. A mailed absentee ballot must arrive by noon.

Registration closed July 27. The rolls are final.

A sitting congressman turned out for a democratic socialist. A Senate nomination for a man who wants to abolish ICE. Eighty-two votes out of eighty-four here at home, and silence from the man who cast them.

That is the November case. Tuesday decides who makes it.

Five days.