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You should be paying attention to Alabama.
Why? A congressional seat in this deeply red state, gerrymandered to essentially guarantee Republican control, might actually stay blue.
Meet Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures of Alabama's 2nd congressional district. For Figures, running for re-election despite Republican redistricting wasn't a question.
"I don't come from a place where you can seek out a position in Congress when the environment is such that it looks like on paper it's in your favor, but when it looks like on paper it may not be in your favor, that you tuck your tail and run," Figures said. "We fight where I'm from."
In 2024, Figures’ election marked the first time that Alabama had two Black members of Congress. But following the Louisiana v. Callais decision, Republicans removed Figures’ hometown of Mobile, along with several Black Belt counties, from the district and added the overwhelmingly white and rural Wiregrass region in the Southeast part of the state, which includes Houston County, to dilute Black voting power and turn the seat red.
Figurs has been campaigning all over the district, including in Enterprise, AL, the hometown of Rhett Marques, the Republican nominee.
And Republicans are starting to get nervous. “If we don’t win this seat, I can guarantee you we will not have the leadership in the House, and that’s what it comes down to,” Marques recently said.
Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis, recently shifted Alabama's 2nd congressional district to a "toss-up" from "leans Republican."