hoped to make gains in the Rocket City

HUNTSVILLE — If there’s a place where Alabama Democrats think they can make gains this fall, it’s the Rocket City. 

Demographic trends, including population loss in the Black Belt and a general aging of the population, are creating challenges for Democrats around the state. But Huntsville is growing and, perhaps more importantly, attracting the kind of resident Democrats think they can reach.

“That population boom is mostly related to the defense contractors, NASA, engineering,” said Tabitha Isner, vice-chair of the Alabama Democratic Party and a state Senate candidate in the Montgomery area. “These are highly-educated folks coming in from elsewhere, and very often folks who are new to town are less set in their ways and less affected by the overall political atmosphere in the state, so it seems like a good opportunity for us to make a good solid first impression on folks who are new to Alabama.”

The state party is focusing its resources on Huntsville-area elections this fall, hoping those trends and what appears to be a Democratic-leaning national environment will lead to flips of some GOP-held seats. Between Senate District 2 and House District 25, there are five Democratic candidates. 

Whether 2026 will be a tipping point for the area remains to be seen. The GOP remains formidable in fundraising and strong on the local level: Republicans currently hold six of Madison County’s nine state House seats; all five of its state Senate seats; five of its six county commission seats and all of its county board of education seats. 

“Just because this district’s historically voted Republican doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to go Republican this next election cycle,” said John Roberts, a Republican candidate for Senate District 2, in a phone interview on Friday. “We’re very focused on meeting voters where they’re at, at the door, listening and being responsive to what we’re hearing out there.”

But the county has been trending away from the GOP in federal and state elections. Where President Donald Trump got 65% of Alabama’s vote in 2024, he got 53.4% of the vote in Madison to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 44.4%. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, who got nearly 67% of the vote statewide in her 2022 re-election campaign, got 60% in Madison against a badly-underfunded Democratic challenger.

In 2022, Sen. Tom Butler, R-Madison, defeated Democrat Kim Lewis by 10 points in his reelection campaign, according to election results. In the race, Butler raised and spent nearly $1 million to Lewis’ $167,000, according to campaign finance records. 

In the same year, Rigsby defeated Democrat Mallory Hagan by 16 points, according to election results.  Rigsby and Hagan’s fundraising was more level, at about $210,000 spent each, according to records. 

And in 2024, Democratic nominee Marilyn Lands, emphasizing reproductive rights after the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling, won House District 10, giving Democrats their first net gain in the Alabama Legislature in over 20 years.

Isner said that using returns from the 2024 General Election, it would only take a five-point swing for a Democratic pickup in House District 25 and even less in Senate District 2. 

“All it would take is a five point swing, and if the national trends of swinging 10 or more points are going to hold, we would certainly expect HD 25 to be one of the ones,” she said. “It would take even less to swing that district (SD 2) … I would say we would consider that pretty much a toss up district.”

Looking for opportunities

The Senate District 2 seat was left open by Butler’s retirement. Two Democrats are seeking their party’s nomination for House District 25 and will face incumbent Rep. Phillip Rigsby, R-Huntsville. Isner said that having Democrats on the ballot in previous elections helps voters know to look for one.

“If you’re used to only having Republicans on your ballot, you might not even think to look into a Democratic candidate,” she said. “It often takes us several cycles before we can really introduce ourselves to voters and get voters to take us seriously.”

Jackson Hannan, data and technology chair of the Madison County Democratic Executive Committee, used precinct data to estimate 2024 election results by legislative district. According to his estimates, Trump won House District 25 by 5.3% and Harris won Senate District 2 by 0.1%.

Voting precincts do not always line up with legislative districts. Hannan said he calculated the margins by using the land area and vote totals, “assuming homogeneous partisanship throughout the precinct.”

“If we can get the right lineup at the top, then we can ride for HD 25 which is a west Huntsville, Madison seat, Senate District 2, where we have three candidates running in the primary right now, and that is actually a Kamala Harris, plus like point two seat,”  Hannan said in an interview Friday morning. “So in a good year, we should be winning that, especially with the national conditions as they are.”

In order to flip those seats, though, voters have to turn out – something that Alabama struggles with statewide. In the 2022 midterm elections, 38.6% of registered voters statewide voted and 39.1% of registered voters in Madison County voted. In 2024, Alabama recorded its lowest presidential election turnout since 1988, due in part to a nearly 10% drop in Democratic votes. 

“I think the reason we see such low voter turnout in Alabama is because so many of the seats are not consistently challenged and consistently competitive,” Isner said. “Having these candidates run again and again, and run serious races helps people to understand that they do, in fact, live in a competitive district, and their vote does matter, and so they need to pay closer attention.”

A battle for Senate District 2

Roberts will face one of three Democratic candidates in November in Senate District 2: Rudolph Drake, Alex House or Guy Sotomayor. Roberts said in a phone interview Friday that even though he’s running as a Republican, he knows the district is competitive and wants to listen to everybody.

“You’ve got a lot of shifting dynamics, a lot of people moving from across the state, from across the nation here. So you’ve got a kind of an electorate that’s changing. I think for us, though, that’s a great opportunity to go out there and tell our story and focus on the issues that truly move this community forward and why we’ve had such success up here. I’m not getting caught up in all the partisan games,” Roberts said.

The district covers mostly Madison County and part of Limestone County, two of the fastest growing counties in the state. Each candidate said that affordability is something that voters care about, especially in the current economy where gas prices in Madison County average $3.86 per gallon for regular gasoline, according to AAA. 

“I’m proud to run as a Republican, but I’m more focused on the family’s pocketbooks. I’ve got two young kids at home, understanding the cost of childcare and raising a family and the price at the grocery store,” Roberts said.

Drake said in an interview on Thursday morning that affordability goes beyond gas prices to housing, utilities and child care.

“When we talk about affordability, we’re talking about mortgages and we’re talking about renting a place to live. People just want to be able to afford a place to live,” Drake said.

Huntsville and Madison residents get their utilities from the Tennessee Valley Authority, a regional federal provider, unlike the rest of the state, where Alabama Power is the dominant utility.

House said in an interview Thursday evening that while the district has a growing and diverse population, issues still impact people nonetheless. 

“It doesn’t really matter what walk of life someone’s from, it takes a chunk out of their paycheck when they’re paying $4 a gallon for gas and when groceries have gone up ridiculously high,” House said.

Sotomayor said in a phone interview Thursday morning that even though prices are rising, wages are not.

“People are struggling, and people are feeling real pain when it comes to choosing ‘Do I eat this meal or do I put gas in my car?’” Sotomayor said.

In House District 25, Rigsby will either face Allison Montgomery or Damon Eubanks. Multiple messages seeking comment from Eubanks were left last week, and a message seeking comment from Rigsby was left Friday.

Montgomery said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that Huntsville-area voters care about the same thing that the rest of the state does: having a good education system, reliable and affordable health care and efficient use of their tax dollars.

“I don’t think we’re too terribly different from folks in the state. I mean, the vibe is different, for sure, but we all need the same things,” Montgomery said.

Democrats have long struggled to raise money in elections across the state. As of campaign filings due on April 1, Roberts raised over $241,000 and has spent more than $33,000; Drake raised about $3,000 and spent $440; House has not reported any fundraising but has spent $3,000 of his own money; and Sotomayor has raised about $2,700 and spent less than $2,000. Candidates said that it is hard to ask voters for money when they know money is tight to begin with.

“It’s very difficult for me to ask people for money, particularly when my voting bloc is people who don’t have excess money to throw around,” Sotomayor said. “Meanwhile, my Republican opponents are getting money from huge businesses and big corporate PACs that I can’t compete with, and I won’t compete with that.”

House said that he is asking more for votes, not money.

“Democrats are out there fighting for working people who are the majority of the people in our country and in our state,” House said. “A lot of those people don’t have 10s of 1000s of dollars to contribute to political campaigns, but they contribute their votes, and so that’s one of the reasons why Democrats are still able to compete, even though we were at a huge disadvantage when it comes to fundraising.”

Drake said that as he meets people in his day-to-day life, they give him all that they have, and he is thankful for that.

“I feel like that’s what’s going to be my niche, is to go door to door with my volunteers, knocking on doors and that’s basically it … letting them know what I’m standing for,” Drake said.

Nationwide momentum?

Democrats nationwide have either flipped statewide offices and legislative seats or narrowed Republican leads in off-year elections and special elections in the months following. Democrats in Mississippi ended the GOP’s supermajority control of the state legislature in a 2025 special election.

Virginia Democrats took over the previously Republican-controlled executive branch in November. In Georgia, Trump-backed Republican Clay Fuller won former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat, but Democrat Shawn Harris narrowed Fuller’s win by about 8 percentage points in the state’s most Republican-leaning district. Harris previously ran against Greene and lost by 29 points. 

Mike Ball represented House District 10 as a Republican from 2002 to 2022, a seat now held by Lands. Ball, now an independent, said in a phone interview Thursday that Alabama Democrats can pick up some races because of the divisive nature of the Republican party.

“Right now, the Democrats have this huge opportunity. There’s exclusivity and inclusivity. When Republicans were in the minority, they were very inclusive, they were welcoming anybody that wanted to join or wanted to participate,” Ball said. “As soon as they took over the majority in 2010, the movement to get rid of the centrists and the moderates and the ones who weren’t Republican enough, that’s really started to grow.”

The Alabama Republican Party in March, more than halfway through the legislative session, announced that its top legislative priority was to require voters to register with a party in order to vote in a primary election. The bill caused division amongst Republican lawmakers, especially those in north Alabama, and it died on the final day of session. 

“I think that there is a large chunk of the electorate – people who have been and have identified as a Republican on a lot of issues, social issues and fiscal issues – there’s a nice chunk of those who are being totally ignored in the Republican party as near as I can tell,” Ball said.

Speaking to the Madison County Democratic Executive Committee at its meeting Thursday evening, Lands said that she is proud to have so many Democrats on the ballot this year.

“I believe there’s going to be a course correction in 2026. We have so many seats with the potential to flip,” she said. “I think for many of us, November of 2026 may be the most important election in our lives.”

There are 131 Democrats that are running for either statewide office, the Legislature or federal office. In 2022, 87 Democrats ran for office, according to paperwork submitted to the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office. 

House District 10 resident Rosemary Finley, a Republican turned independent voter by Trump, said in a phone interview Friday that Trump’s demeanor trickles down to Alabama Republicans. 

“I just think too many of the people in the Republican Party just bow to Trump rather than standing up for what I call the right type of Republican behavior, which is the Reagan behavior,” Finley said. 

Hannan said that having “good” candidates at the top of the ballot in November, which he hopes will be Doug Jones in the governor’s slot, Kyle Sweetser for U.S. Senate and Andrew Sneed for Congressional District 5, will help all the Democratic candidates down-ballot. 

“People have to actually believe that we’re going to be able to win, which is kind of a hurdle when it’s as one sided as it is in Alabama,” Hannan said. 

Lands, a licensed professional counselor, said at the meeting Thursday night that Democrats must choose hope instead of fear.

“We can let fear settle in and convince us that nothing changes, or we can’t make room for hope. We’ve got to invite real hope in, which is not about being naive and wishing things were different, but it’s about choosing to act anyway,” Lands said. “All the progress that we’ve made in this state and in this country started with ordinary people like us, nurses, mothers, students, farmers, volunteers, people who decided that they weren’t going to wait for someone else to do it.”