2nd Congressional District: Merika Coleman aims to bring federal dollars to the area

This is one in an ongoing series of profiles of candidates in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District. Read the profiles to date here.

Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said she resisted entering the race for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District for weeks.

Then one of her biggest supporters spoke up. “Mom, have you made up your mind?”’ Coleman said, recalling in a recent interview the moment her daughter brought up the issue of possibly running for the seat. ‘“I am still looking at it, thinking about it.’ She said to me, ‘well mom, if not you then who?’”

That conversation, she said, started her down the path of becoming one of the 18 candidates, 11 of them Democrats, to represent the state’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The district runs through the southern Black Belt and includes Montgomery. A federal court ordered the districts redrawn in 2022, saying that a map approved by the Alabama Legislature in 2021 packed Black voters into a single district, muting their voices in the political process. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rulings, and the court last year approved a map that created a 2nd Congressional District with a Black Voting Age Population (BVAP) of 48.7%.

Coleman said her daughter prompted her to travel throughout the new district. She solicited the opinions from those living in the area, and tried to understand the issues affecting residents.

Once Coleman was satisfied that she had learned all she could, her mind was set.

“It was not one of those overnight decisions,” Coleman said. “It was well thought out, well prayed over, and after meeting new folks and shoring up those relationships that I had throughout my lifespan, but also through my political life, we thought we had something to offer to the citizens in District 2.”

Coleman is a veteran of the Alabama State House, having served in the Alabama House of Representatives for two decades before winning election to the Alabama Senate in 2022.

“For the citizens of Congressional District 2, they get a member of Congress that is ready to serve on day one,” Coleman said. “I have the unique experience of not only serving in the Legislature for the past 21 years, both in the majority and in the minority, serving in leadership, but also my life experience uniquely prepares me for this district.”

Prior to that, she worked as a community organizer for a couple of nonprofit groups, including Alabama Arise and Greater Birmingham Ministries, advocating for issues that are important to her.

She received feedback from different voters that, she said, gave her some sense of the problems that residents face. Mental health, crime, housing and education all came up.

Health care was another topic on top of people’s agenda. Coleman said she spoke to a woman who was supposed to have her baby delivered at Monroe County Hospital in Monroeville, which closed its labor and delivery unit in November.

“I had a pregnant woman in my listening session that talked specifically of the fear for any emergency situation,” Coleman said. “And of course, I felt for her as a mother, because I was a mother that had to have an emergency C-section. I just couldn’t even imagine, my hospital was 15 minutes away at the time, for someone to drive 40 minutes away in an emergency, to a hospital.”

Coleman’s priority is to bring federal resources to the district that needs it to address many of the issues she heard from constituents. In her first 100 days, she said she would find connections with federal department heads and agency leaders to form relationships to place her in a position to request resources for constituents.

“I want to make sure that, in Congressional District 2, I bring home the bacon,” she said.

Coleman also said she would recommend the plaintiffs in the Allen v. Milligan case, which led to the drawing of the new district, for the Congressional Gold Medal.

On health care, Coleman said she would follow the lead of former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, who sought to reduce Alabama’s required match for Medicaid expansion. Coleman also supports passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would strengthen the 1965 law and restore parts struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court requiring federal review of election laws passed by states with histories of voter discrimination, like Alabama.

“I have been accessible to my constituents, and I want to continue to be accessible to my constituents and the elected officials in Congressional District 2,” Coleman said. “But I also have a record of production, bringing home the bacon to my district. I want to take all of that, all of those unique talents that I have as a lawmaker, as a lawyer, as a community advocate, as a professor, as a mom and as a daughter, to Washington D.C.”