In one of the closest legislative contests of the night, challenger Danielle Duggar narrowly defeated two-term incumbent State Rep. Matt Simpson (R-Daphne) in the Republican primary for Alabama House District 96, which covers the northern Eastern Shore in Baldwin County and parts of Mobile County.

Duggar, a Spanish Fort resident, took 2,951 votes (51.37%) to Simpson’s 2,794 votes (48.63%) — a margin of just 157 votes out of 5,745 cast.

“I want to thank the people of District 96. It has been an honor to serve the last 8 years in the Alabama House of Representatives,” Simpson wrote after the vote was final.

“While tonight’s election results didn’t go the way I had hoped, I am at peace knowing that I gave all I could to serve the people.”

Simpson was among five Republican incumbents targeted in the final weeks of the primary by Alabama Values PAC, a newly registered outside group. The PAC’s mailers, websites, and text messages also targeted State Sens. Greg Albritton and Andrew Jones, as well as State Reps. Phillip Pettus and Frances Holk-Jones – all of whom had supported legislation allowing voters to decide the issue of gambling expansion.

The Simpson campaign issued a formal cease-and-desist demand against Alabama Values PAC the week before the primary, threatening litigation over what his attorneys characterized as defamatory misrepresentations of his legislative record.

The result was a turnaround for Duggar. Backed by the Alabama Farmers Federation, a legislative analyst with the National Vaccine Information Center who first challenged Simpson in 2022 and lost.

This cycle, she ran on opposition to gambling expansion, full elimination of the state’s remaining 2% grocery tax, and a closed primary system.

Simpson, an assistant district attorney in Mobile County and former chairman of the House Ethics and Campaign Finance Committee, previously chaired the Baldwin County Republican Party and was a key sponsor of the 2023 fentanyl trafficking mandatory minimum law.