By middle school, we’re all taught that the word “democracy” combines “demos,” the Greek word for people, with “kratos,” meaning rule.
Rule of the people.
That doesn’t describe the government we live under.
Alabamians say they want Medicaid expansion. They don’t seem keen on the state’s effective abortion ban. If you let Alabama voters decide whether the state should have a lottery, odds are that it would pass, and it wouldn’t be close.
For the last six decades, people have returned to the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge each year. They have come to remember the pain and suffering early Civil Rights Movement foot soldiers endured.
The 60th Anniversary Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, a weeklong event, commemorated March 7, 1965, when marchers were brutally beaten by white Alabama state troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross the bridge en route to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black people.
The most interesting and paramount race on the ballot in the March 5th primaries was the one for the new open 2nd Congressional District.
This new district was created by the federal courts to implement a new Democratic/Black District in the Heart of Dixie. The Democratic nominee will be favored to win this seat in November. When the plaintiffs proposed their new district plan to the court, they attached a chart, which illustrated that had there been a Democratic vs. Republican congressional race on the ballot, the Democrat would have won in 16 of the 17 races. Washington insiders are handicapping this race as a Democratic pickup.
The most interesting race to watch this year in Alabama will be for the newly drawn Second Congressional District.
The new seat was drawn by the federal courts to create a second majority-minority district in Alabama. Currently we have six Republicans and one Democrat representing Alabama in Washington. If a Democrat wins the seat, we will have five Republicans and two Democrats on the Potomac in 2025. The new seat includes all of Montgomery and extends through the Black Belt, and gathers most of the black voters in Mobile.
