Category: Alabama Legislature

Two House Seats Head to Runoffs in Special Election

BirminghamWatch,

Travis Hendrix and Sylvia Swayne will be fighting it out in a runoff for the Alabama House District 55 seat.

With seven people running for the Democratic nomination during the special election for the seat, Hendrix got 27.91% of the vote and Swayne got 21.45%.

No Republicans qualified for the race, and whichever candidate wins the Oct. 24 runoff is likely to become the new representative.

In the District 16 race, Bryan Brinyark and Brad Cox are headed to a runoff for the Republican nomination. With five Republicans in the race, Brinyark got 32.56% of the vote, and Cox got 32.96%.

The candidate who wins more than half the vote in the runoff will face Democratic candidate John Underwood in the general election for the seat on Jan. 9. Read more.

Vote Tuesday in Two JeffCo-Area State House Seats

BirminghamWatch ,

Voters in some parts of Jefferson County will be headed to the polls Tuesday to choose among candidates for two state House of Representatives seats.

Special elections are being held to choose nominees for House District 55 and District 16, filling seats left vacant by the resignations of Fred Plump and Kyle South.

Plump resigned after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice on allegations he took money from a fund used to support programs in Jefferson County under the direction of another legislator and kicked back a portion of it to a legislator’s assistant.

South, a Fayette Republican, stepped down from his house seat June 30 to become CEO of the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce.

Read more about the election.

For more information on the candidates, go to:

House District 55 Special Election Candidates

House District 16 Special Election Candidates

Federal Court Blocks Alabama’s Congressional Map, Orders New Lines Drawn

Brian Lyman and Alandar Rocha, Alabama Reflector ,

A three-judge federal panel Tuesday ruled that a new Alabama congressional map failed to address Voting Rights Act violations and ordered a third party to draw new lines.

In a 217-page opinion in the case, known as Allen v. Milligan, U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus and U.S. District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer sharply criticized the Alabama Legislature, writing that they were “deeply troubled” that lawmakers did not draw a map that gave Black voters in the state the chance to elect representatives of their choosing, as the judges ordered in a January 2022 ruling.

“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. Read more.

Alabama House, Senate Approve Separate Congressional Maps

Jemma Stephenson and Alander Rocha, Alabama Reflector ,

Republican supermajorities in the Alabama House and Senate approved two separate congressional maps with a single majority-Black congressional district and one with a Black population ranging from 38% to 42%.

Democrats in both chambers, who support maps with two majority-Black districts, opposed both proposals and said they would not satisfy federal courts that ruled that the state’s earlier congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act. Read more.

  Public Health

  Jefferson County Roads

  Special Election

  • Two House Seats Head to Runoffs in Special Election

    Travis Hendrix and Sylvia Swayne will be fighting it out in a runoff for the Alabama House District 55 seat.

    With seven people running for the Democratic nomination during the special election for the seat, Hendrix got 27.91% of the vote and Swayne got 21.45%.

    No Republicans qualified for the race, and whichever candidate wins the Oct. 24 runoff is likely to become the new representative.

    In the District 16 race, Bryan Brinyark and Brad Cox are headed to a runoff for the Republican nomination. With five Republicans in the race, Brinyark got 32.56% of the vote, and Cox got 32.96%.

    The candidate who wins more than half the vote in the runoff will face Democratic candidate John Underwood in the general election for the seat on Jan. 9. Read more.

  BirminghamWatch Recommends

  Jefferson County Commission

  • JeffCo Sets Largest Budget Ever

    Angela Dixon, the chief financial officer of Jefferson County, was quick to acknowledge the help she got from the county’s budget office in delivering the county’s largest ever budget.

    “These ladies are the gems of Jefferson County,” Dixon said of Lene Wormley and Marilyn Shepard. “They have gotten the distinguished budget award for four years straight, and it’s only two people in the office.”

    Those few workers prepared the total of $1,264,956,131 budget passed Thursday by the County Commission. Read more.

  About News

  • From a Bad Situation Comes a Powerful Defense of Local Journalism

    “Most family newspaper sale announcements bear some variation of stock language regarding the new owner’s ability to ‘assume the families’ stewardship,’ ‘continue to provide strong local reporting,’ and ‘maintain the legacy’ of the selling family. Sadly, we feel that none of that will be true in our case.”

    — George Lynett, publisher emeritus of Times-Shamrock Communications
    Read more.

  Jefferson County Commission

  • Much Obliged: JeffCo Wins New Award for Helping Autauga County After Tornado

    The Roads and Transportation Department of Jefferson County received a heartfelt “thank you” Thursday for coming to the rescue of Autauga County after it was hit by a January tornado.

    The county road crew became the first recipient of the first One Family Award because of its efforts in the wake of the tornado. The award was presented last week during the convention of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama. Read more.

  Alabama Legislature

  Reading Birmingham

  • New Book Explores Stories of Early African American Activists in Birmingham

    Segregation in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871-1901 (Louisiana State University Press, 2023) by Carl V. Harris

    Birmingham is known around the world as a place where African Americans fought and sometimes died to secure their rights as citizens and dismantle Jim Crow segregation. But Jim Crow did not spring up fully formed, nor was it a system that had always existed. It was the product of a long and tortuous push and pull between blacks seeking justice and whites seeking control.

    At its birth in 1871, Birmingham was a Reconstruction-era city, and Birmingham came of age in a time when white Southerners and African American Southerners, many only a few years removed from enslavement, were struggling to find their places in a new post-war racial order. This is the story, and the stories of early African American activists who are largely unknown today, that Carl V. Harris tells in his new book Segregation in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871-1901.

    Harris, who taught history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died before completing this book. His colleague, W. Elliott Brownlee, edited and finished the manuscript. Harris’ earlier book, Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (University of Tennessee Press, 1977), was the first scholarly book on Birmingham’s history and it is still indispensable for anyone wanting to understand the political dynamics of Birmingham’s early decades. Read more.

  BirminghamWatch

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