Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall doesn’t believe it’s part of his job description to help Democrats get elected in the Yellowhammer State.
Alabama’s redistricting battle has escalated since Governor Kay Ivey announced a special session of the Alabama Legislature to redraw the congressional map. This is signaling a new phase in the state’s response to recent U.S. Supreme Court action in Louisiana v. Callais.
During a Tuesday morning in an interview with “The Rightside” in partnership with Yellowhammer News with Allison Sinclair and Amie Beth Shaver, Marshall, who is also a candidate for U.S. Senate, effectively argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was never meant to guarantee Democrats a winnable seat in Alabama.
“The issue is whether or not Democrats can win, and it’s not our responsibility to create a minority party district so that somehow [or] another their voices can be heard,” Marshall said. “They’ve got just as much right to battle out on policy issues as Republican voters do. And candidly, I think right now that the district that’s represented by Democratic Congress members would probably [be] better off right now with some conservative voices being able to help their communities.”
Marshall also debunked the argument by those on the left who claim this will bring back Jim Crow in states like Alabama.
“If you look back to Alabama’s first case up there in this cycle, the Milligan case, one [of the] things that Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence was, [is there] a point in time where this has to end,” he said. “Because… we offered at trial and have shown – and I think it’s true throughout the South – we have record numbers of minority voter participation in our elections, which shows that those impediments that we were concerned about when the Voting Rights Act was passed are no longer in play.”
Marshall has filed emergency motions in three redistricting cases — Allen v. Singleton, Allen v. Milligan, and Allen v. Caster — asking the Supreme Court to lift injunctions blocking Alabama from using its 2023 Legislature-drawn congressional map.
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
