Alabama Republican Party leaders are joining several lawmakers in Montgomery to praise the passage of a bill meant to protect the integrity of their primaries in the Yellowhammer State.
“Republicans across Alabama have been asking for this for more than a decade,” said ALGOP Chairman Scott Stadthagen. “The message from the grassroots of our Party has been clear — Republican voters should choose Republican nominees.”
The Alabama House passed the SAVE Act party registration bill Thursday. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R-Trinity), requires party registration to be able to vote in the state’s partisan primary elections.
“I want to especially thank Rep. Ernie Yarbrough for sponsoring this legislation and doing the work to move it through the Alabama House,” Stadthagen added. “Ernie stepped up to lead on an issue that Republicans across our state care deeply about, and his leadership made today’s vote possible.”
Stadthagen also pointed to documented cases of Democrats intentionally voting in Republican primaries to influence the outcome.
“For years we’ve seen Democrats openly talk about voting in Republican primaries to influence the outcome — some even bragging about it in national media outlets like the New York Times,” Stadthagen said.
“That’s not healthy for either party, and it’s certainly not fair to Republican voters.”
The legislature has received some pressure from conservative groups to get the bill through. Tom Fredricks openly threatened to get a petition passed to replace Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter as the Republican nominee for Alabama House District 24 if he got in the way of the SAVE Act’s passage.
“The party’s been pushing for closed primaries,” Fredricks said. “We’ve known that. We’ve had, in Morgan County, we’ve got about a 3% crossover vote history. That’s verifiable. I’m sure the numbers are a little higher than that. It creates a problem that’s been needed to be addressed for a long time. You know, 30 some states already have close primaries. Alabama needs to be one of them.”
Fredricks now says he’s dropping the effort.
“This has been festering for a long time, but when Nathaniel Ledbetter got caught on a hot mic, you know, expressing what we’ve all known for years in our hearts. It really, it really brought the issue forward, and it gave us, it gave us the steam to take it to the next level,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the complaint that the call for action has subsided pursuant to today’s vote, Speaker Ledbetter did extend an olive branch. Maybe he genuinely feels like his comments were out of place, and maybe the Republican Party will have a seat at the table on legislative affairs moving forward that really should have already existed.”
The measure passed 63-35 and now moves to the Senate, where Sen. Sam Givhan (R-Huntsville) is carrying the legislation.
Fredricks said he will now focus his efforts on getting Alabama Republican senators on board.
“Members of the Senate are no different than members of the House in the eyes of the State and County Republican parties,” he said. “We want them to recognize our voice, to recognize that they are wearing our brand on their sleeve, and because they do wear that brand, and they wear that brand successfully. We want, we want a seat at their table as well.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
