Alabama Redrew Shomari Figures’ Seat to Lean Republican. Black Turnout Could Still Decide It

Alabama lawmakers changed the political ground beneath Rep. Shomari Figures. The Democratic incumbent won a court-drawn 2nd Congressional District in 2024, becoming part of the first two-member Black congressional delegation in state history. The map voters will use on November 3 is more Republican, removes Figures’ Mobile base and cuts the district’s Black voting-age population from about 48% to 40%. Yet with three days left, the race against Republican state Rep. Rhett Marques is no longer being treated as the easy pickup the new lines appeared to create.

The legal change came before the new lines

The remap followed a major shift in voting-rights law. In spring, the Supreme Court narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge race-based vote dilution. It then allowed Alabama to use a 2023 legislative map while blocking a lower-court ruling that had found intentional discrimination against Black voters. The state held new congressional primaries in August, and the redrawn district now stretches from Montgomery and the eastern Black Belt through the Wiregrass to the Georgia and Florida borders.

A court-created opportunity district lasted one election

That sequence matters because Figures’ original seat was not a gift from either political party. A federal court had ordered the earlier map after finding Alabama unlawfully diluted Black voting power. Black residents make up roughly 27% of the state, but before the court-ordered map only one of Alabama’s seven House districts gave Black voters a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Figures’ 2024 victory produced a second Black representative for the first time, alongside Rep. Terri Sewell.

Eight percentage points changed the political terrain

The new district changes both the math and the map. Its Black voting-age share is about eight points lower, and Donald Trump carried the territory now inside it by 14 percentage points in 2024. Mobile is gone. In its place are more Republican counties in southeast Alabama, while Montgomery, Tuskegee and several Black Belt counties remain. That makes unusually high turnout in Montgomery and other Black communities central to Figures’ path, but it also requires him to compete for voters in agricultural and military communities that usually favor Republicans.

Two candidates are arguing over cost, services and Trump

Figures has emphasized affordability, rural hospitals, education and the pressure that fuel and fertilizer prices place on farmers. Marques, an Enterprise businessman and state legislator endorsed by Trump, has campaigned on lower taxes, small business, public safety and advancing the president’s agenda. He argues that his record and views better match the district. Figures argues that his work bringing federal money to hospitals, housing and local services demonstrates that he can represent communities that were moved into the seat.

The money says toss-up; the map still says Republican lean

The national money now treating the contest as competitive tells its own story, though it does not predict the result. Television spending in the district climbed to nearly $10 million over seven weeks, with Democratic groups spending more overall, according to AdImpact figures cited by the Associated Press. Campaign-finance reports through October 14 showed Figures raising about $2.7 million to Marques’ $1.7 million. The University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Center for Politics moved the district from ‘Likely Republican’ to ‘Lean Republican’ and then to ‘Toss-up’ as fundraising, outside spending and the wider political environment changed.

A close race does not undo the loss of voting power

That late movement should not erase the structural change. A competitive race is not the same thing as an undamaged voting-rights remedy. Figures is trying to survive in a district that contains many of the same Black communities but gives them less electoral influence as a share of the whole. Marques is trying to win under the map the state Legislature chose. The outcome will decide a House seat; it will not settle the underlying argument over whether Alabama’s lines fairly translate a 27% Black population into political opportunity.

The Black Angle’s view: turnout cannot substitute for fair representation

The Black Angle’s view: the most important fact is not that Figures might overcome the redraw. It is that Black voters are again being asked to compensate through exceptional turnout for a map that reduced their collective voting strength. That makes participation powerful, but it should not turn a legal question about representation into a test of whether one community can repeatedly out-organize the lines drawn around it.

What remains uncertain

No votes have been counted, and race ratings, fundraising totals and campaign appearances are not results. The attached WSFA report shows Figures campaigning with Sen. Cory Booker on October 22 and explains the redrawn seat; it is reporting context, not an endorsement. The cover is an official 2024 congressional portrait and is labeled as archive imagery rather than a photograph from this election. Final results and any later court action will require separate updates.