The Alabama Democratic Party can’t afford to write off 2026

Tommy Tuberville, our reputed gubernatorial inevitability, should not have a clear path to the governor’s mansion.

His Senate career is almost all cable news hits, conspiracy thinking and attacks on transgender youth. His platform is the same reward-the-wealthy, punish-the-marginalized, Trump-is-all pitch we’ve heard from state Republicans for a decade.

Call me naive, but Alabama needs something more than this. We deserve officials whose priorities are public matters and not the private goals of the state’s many wealthy cliques. A gubernatorial campaign that could be waged in its entirety from a beach house won’t provide any of that.

So who’s going to challenge him?

Believe it or not, the GOP primary has a not-Tuberville path. The senator’s strength — high name recognition — is also his weakness. People know who Tuberville is, for better and worse. It’s not hard to envision a Republican challenger who can give the GOP base what it wants and promise to remember what triangles are.

But the existence of a path doesn’t mean that someone will walk it. The Alabama Republican Party is hierarchical and demands deference from its members. Tuberville can raise money, and the state GOP organization in the past has removed primary challengers from the ballot on thin pretexts. After Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth bowed out last month, it’s hard to see any other Republican jumping into the race.

That leaves us the Alabama Democratic Party. Which is a shaky vessel for political opposition.

The party has almost no presence outside the major cities and the Black Belt, and its leadership seems content with that fact.

Straight-ticket voting also means that millions of voters in November 2026 will mark the Republican box on their ballots without knowing or caring about the names annexed to that capital R. Get the party to nominate Cthulu; get Cthulu in a race against Atticus Finch, and odds are Alabamians will send a malevolent octopus god to Montgomery.

Democrats have a lot of challenges. But that makes finding a strong candidate for governor imperative. Because the party’s survival is at stake.

Let’s go back to our last gubernatorial contest. If you’re a voter who despises professional politicians, the 2022 Democratic field should have been your dream campaign. Only one candidate, Sen. Malika Sanders-Fortier of Selma, had ever held public office.

But you also got to see what happens when a nonpolitician leads a political ticket. Gubernatorial nominee Yolanda Flowers was a first-time candidate, and it showed. In a year when the Dobbs decision turned out huge numbers of Democrats, Flowers failed to convey a clear position on abortion. Her fundraising was so poor that the Libertarian nominee for governor pulled in more direct contributions.

Predictably, Flowers got wiped out by Gov. Kay Ivey. Less expected was the undertow of that defeat.

With no statewide candidate spending money on radio or TV ads, many Democratic voters missed the election. And for the first time in decades, several contests in majority-Black seats became competitive.

Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, a 30-year veteran of the House, barely squeaked past a Republican opponent in his Black Belt district. Three other Black Democrats pulled in less than 60% of the vote, a dangerous number in what on paper are safe seats.

That’s not an experience Alabama Democrats can afford to repeat in 2026. The party’s choice for governor may not win. But the office is prestigious, and campaigns for it affect downballot races. That’s why you need an established name on the top: it raises the profile of every other campaign. If the Democrats don’t find a strong candidate, they’re going to find themselves fighting to protect what they already have.

So who could provide that top-of-the-ticket stability? Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones? Former Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb? Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox? Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin? Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed? Charles Barkley? (Maybe it’s Will Boyd, a declared Democratic gubernatorial candidate, but he’s struggled to raise money in his previous contests.)

“None of the above” is possible. Maybe probable. It’s a lot to ask someone to sacrifice time and energy for a political campaign certain to end in grief.

But strange as it is to say, there’s something bigger than the outcome in the next election. It’s the danger of the Alabama Democratic Party going extinct.

If they sleepwalk through yet another statewide election in 2026, it’s very likely the Democrats will have fewer seats in the Legislature in 2027. And every time the party’s position on the state level retreats, it becomes weaker locally.

The Democrats have to show their voters they’re willing to give Alabamians unhappy with GOP hegemony a voice, at every level of government. If they can’t do that, there’s little reason for their voters to support what candidates they have.

So, Democrats, find someone willing to lead your next campaign. Because challenging Tuberville is not a question of win-or-lose. It’s live or die.