There is no way of saying that Tuesday’s special election in Alabama was in any way a positive for Republicans.
Democrat Marilyn Lands defeated Republican nominee Madison, Alabama, city councilman Teddy Powell by a 62%-38% blowout margin, an unexpected outcome in a seat only recently considered competitive.
For the first time since 2002, Democrats gained a seat on Republicans in the Alabama Legislature, where Republicans currently have a supermajority in both chambers.
What happened?
On Wednesday, national media are heralding the outcome and tying it to Alabama’s strict abortion ban passed by the legislature in 2019 and a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that granted embryos created during in vitro fertilization (IVF) personhood for the sake of civil matters considered by the state’s judiciary.
It is impossible to know how much those issues impacted Tuesday’s outcome. Still, they were not the only significant factors to outright declare the Democrat pickup was a mandate against Alabama’s pro-life policies.
House District 10’s demographic shift
Huntsville and surrounding Madison County, Alabama, have been net beneficiaries of the growth of the federal government. The metropolitan region is home to U.S. Army installation Redstone Arsenal, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and an ever-expanding defense contractor presence.
As has been the case with Washington, D.C. and counties in Maryland and Virginia adjacent to the nation’s capital, the area has seen the government employees and government contractor employees who have brought their politics to the once-solidly Republican district.
Former State Rep. Mike Ball (R), who endorsed Lands, held the seat for two decades. In 2022, he opted not to seek reelection.
In the 2022 general election held 16 months earlier, Republican now-former State Rep. David Cole (R) won the seat over Lands, who was also the Democrat nominee in that election, by 6%.
David Cole poisons the well for Republicans
Despite winning in 2022, Cole went on to have his own legal problems.
Cole was charged with voter fraud, a Class C felony in Alabama. The court found that Cole had voted in House District 10 despite not living in the district.
Alabama law also requires members of the legislature to live in the district that they represent.
Last August, after resigning his seat, Cole pleaded guilty to voter fraud. A judge ordered him to pay $53,000 in restitution and serve a three-year split sentence, 60 days in the Madison County, Alabama, Jail and three years on probation.
In September, Gov. Kay Ivey sets the March 26 date for the House District 10 special election.
Underwhelming effort by Republicans
In the race’s closing stages, Lands and Democrats outworked her opponent, Republican Teddy Powell.
Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) took part in the late stages of Lands’ campaign. Jones is hailed as a hero by Alabama Democrats for handing the underdog party its last major win. He defeated former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in 2017 to flip the seat once held by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to the Democrat column.
The contest came in the middle of Alabama’s legislative session, which has passed several bills touching on hot-button issues, including a DEI ban, school choice and a ballot-harvesting prohibition.
However, it also came when the Alabama House of Representatives GOP leadership’s presence was seemingly absent from the scene.
Abysmally low turnout
Alabamians are notoriously apathetic in special election contests, and Tuesday was no exception.
In a state with nearly 3.8 million registered voters and a district with 41,016 registered voters, 5,965 ballots were cast for both candidates.
That put the turnout at 14.54%. Lands earned 3,715 votes to Powell’s 2,236 votes.
Lands’ vote total constitutes a fraction of a percent of Alabama’s overall total registered voters. That suggests the outcome can hardly be interpreted as a statewide mandate for on-demand elective abortion.
Effort to frame it as referendum on IVF, abortion came late
As noted, the governor set the special election for the seat in September 2023.
Alabama’s abortion ban had already long been on the books, being signed into law in 2019.
Since the passage and the subsequent Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, voters in House District 10 had already been to the polls. They elected a Republican with the abortion ban law cleared by the federal court and on the books.
Lands had been consistent throughout the campaign regarding her views on abortion.
However, it was not until national media took notice of the contest earlier this month that abortion became the central focus of Lands’ campaign.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor