Candidates call out anti-trans mailers, ‘racial dog-whistle’ tactics in Alabama congressional race
The Alabama Republican Party has sent out flyers attacking Democratic congressional nominee Shomari Figures with anti-transgender images plus another evoking the 1988 Willie Horton ad run against then-Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis.
One of the mailers appears to have Vice President Kamala Harris’ face transposed over Figures’ with language about a “transgender agenda.”
Another features a photo of a man named Brosarick Trammell, and accuses Figures of contributing to the release of criminals onto Alabama streets. It references his work on a federal program that aimed to address harsh and disproportionate drug sentences for nonviolent offenders.
Trammell, who is Black, had a 20-year drug sentence commuted to about 10 years in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He was arrested in Calhoun County in 2023 on charges of drug trafficking. Attempts to contact attorneys listed as representing Trammell were not successful.
Figures and other Democrats campaigning in the 2nd Congressional District, where the voting age population is nearly 49% Black, have denounced the mailers. At a press conference with U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, and Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, on Sunday, Figures said that he “expected” the attacks.
“We’ve seen them send out racial dog-whistle mailers with getting at the fears of Black criminality here lately,” he said. “But we expected that.”
Crockett said the mailers targeting marginalized communities reflected a lack of policy agenda.
“It tells me that, number one, you’re just going to be a rubber stamp for Trump,” she said. “Number two, that you have decided that you want to continue to take us back instead of moving us forward. And finally, that you are about the life of distractions, and so I refuse to be distracted.”
Republicans nationwide have leaned heavily into attacks on transgender people in the final weeks of the election campaign. Through Oct. 9, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and allied groups spent $21 million on anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ ads, about one-third of their overall television spending, according to ABC News. Dobson has opposed transgender athletes playing in the sports of the sex with which they align.
The Alabama Transgender Action Rights Action Coalition (ALTRAC) denounced the flyer in a statement Friday, saying it reflected Republicans being unable to “run on policy to improve the lives of every day Alabamians.”
“It’s well-known that anti-trans campaign rhetoric only serves to harm an already vulnerable population, and doesn’t help bring in new voters,” the statement said.
Alabama Republican Party Chair John Wahl said in an emailed statement that it was insulting for the campaign to label mailers about crime as racist and that Figures needed to take ownership of his party’s “radical views on transgender policies and the sexualization of our children.”
“These out-of-touch policies highlight just how disconnected the Democratic Party has become from Alabama values and Alabama voters,” he said. “Shomari Figures may not like the Republican Party pointing out these policies, but the people of District 2 deserve to know where he stands on all the issues before they vote on November 5.”
Figures faces Republican nominee Caroleene Dobson in next week’s election. The Dobson campaign referred questions to the state party.
Responding to Wahl, Figures said in a statement Thursday that “if the Republican party wanted to send out a mailer of a criminal, they should’ve put out a mailer with Donald Trump on it,” referring to Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges earlier this year.
“Alabama Republicans have been bad for health, bad for workers, bad for education, and bad on crime,” the statement said. “They know they can’t win on these issues, so they put out race-baiting ads with pictures of a ‘scary Black man,’ and put out altered images of me and tell lies about my positions.”
The Clemency Initiative, the program Figures worked on, ran from 2014 to the end of President Barack Obama’s term in 2017. It focused on nonviolent federal drug offenders whose sentences would have been lower under more modern guidelines.
Among other requirements, those applying to the program had to have served at least 10 years of a sentence, had to demonstrate good conduct in prison, and had to have had no history of violence. The U.S. Department of Justice said 1,715 people had their sentences commuted under the program by 2017.
“Previous laws unfairly treated crack cocaine much more severely than powder cocaine,” he said Thursday in a written statement. “This resulted in hundreds of thousands of people, primarily Black men, being sent to prison for insanely long prison terms for non-violent, low-level drug offenses, even when they didn’t have a long criminal history, or in many cases, no criminal history.”
According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Justice release, Trammell was convicted of distribution of 50 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing crack and sentenced in 2009 to 20 years in prison and five years’ supervised release. The sentence was commuted to expire on January 19, 2019, conditioned on Trammell enrolling in residential drug treatment.
According to state court records, Trammell was charged with trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in Calhoun County in 2023. The status of those charges is not clear.
Carla Crowder is the executive director of Alabama Appleseed, a group that advocates for criminal justice reform. She wrote in a statement that language like what’s on the clemency mailer reflects the politicization of crime, which “has turned Alabama prisons into overcrowded, unconstitutional, failing institutions that cost Alabama taxpayers billions of dollars yet fail to provide the rehabilitation and public safety that the people of Alabama deserve.”
“This kind of language is extremely misleading in that it fails to acknowledge that people are safely released from prison all of the time; it’s the way sentencing works,” Crowder said. “People are also safely released early on parole or furlough.”
Early release with supervision is now standard for many federal and state prisons, she said.
“It’s smarter and safer than releasing people straight from the chaos of prison into the free world,” she said.
Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey is the Alabama Director of the Human Rights Campaign, a group advocating LGBTQ+ rights. She said via email that the flyer reflected a lack of vision “for lifting people up or bringing the nation together.”
“MAGA tried these anti-trans ad campaigns against North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and failed,” said Anderson-Harvey, who is a transgender woman. “They tried them against Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and failed. The people in Alabama have been clear from the start: they want leaders with solutions to problems and a vision for our country, not bullies who sow hate and division.”