Fueled with misinformation about an influx of undocumented Haitian immigrants and worries over national concerns about immigration policy ahead of the presidential election, outraged speakers stood up during the Fairhope City Council’s meeting Sept. 23 and turned their ire at Councilman Corey Martin.
The reason? He signed a letter of support in 2022 for the U.S. Refugees Admissions Program during the onset of the War in Ukraine about concerns of children being displaced. The outraged speakers linked his signature on the letter to the prospects that undocumented immigrants would arrive by the thousands into coastal Alabama.
Since then, nothing has happened, and the issue has quieted. But with Martin running for re-election in 2025, the question comes up: Is he worried nationalized issues will return as a top campaign concern?
“I’m sure they will try to trickle in but that is nothing that should affect how we run our campaigns,” Martin said recently about hotbed nationalized political issues, which animated ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. “We’ll stick to the things that affect our constituents locally here versus the (national) political realm.”
With the presidential election over, the attention in Alabama turns to the next round of elections in 2025. More than 450 incorporated municipalities are scheduled to host elections for mayor and city councils next year, with most of them occurring on Aug. 26.
And while the nationalized issues that stir passions on social media continue as President-elect Donald Trump names his cabinet, local officials and political insiders believe there will be a return of normalcy in city elections.
In other words, they say, the otherwise mundane issues on city budgets, zoning board matters, or decisions about noise and litter ordinances will rise to the forefront.
Still, some say the fractured media environment and misinformation that swells on social media could be ripe for the elevation of culture war issues, identity politics, immigration reform, reproductive freedoms, the fate of the democracy, and other topics that dominated the national news cycle for much of 2024.
“I think local elections, especially in years when there aren’t also national elections, local issues are still important even though national issues matter even here more than (they) used to,” said Regina Wagner, an assistant professor of political sciences at the University of Alabama.
“For voters, I think the most productive thing to focus on in local elections are local issues – the things that their local elected officials can actually tackle and possibly solve,” she said. “If these elections are about issues outside of the control of local government, it just sets voters up for disappointment when the issues don’t get solved by those they elected to local offices.”
Shifted calendar
Political signs for candidates in Daphne, Ala., at Windsor Drive and North Main Street in Daphne. The three largest signs are for the three candidates seeking the mayoral office during the Aug. 25, 2020, municipal elections – Steve Carey, Selena Vaughn and Robin LeJeune. The next municipal election is occurring five years later on Aug. 26, 2025. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).
The focus on local elections – and likely, local issues – is thanked, in large part, to efforts in the Alabama Legislature three years ago to move the municipal contests to off-cycle years.
The Alabama League of Municipalities led the effort following the 2020 municipal contests, and the Legislature overwhelmingly approved to upend a rotation that had been in place since the 1980s in which the majority of the state’s municipalities hosted their elections a few months before the presidential contests.
The League based its effort on logistical matters such as a shortage of poll workers, electronic machines, and voter confusion over voting venues. National, state, and county voting venues do not always align with municipal voting centers.
Most of Alabama’s mayors and council members, because of the shift in the election years, have been granted an extra year in their four-year terms. The Alabama Constitution prohibits shortening terms of elected officials, leaving the only option to grant a one-time extension of five-year terms to move the municipal elections off the national calendar. After 2025, the four-year cycle for municipal contests will return.
The changes do not affect some of the state’s largest cities. Birmingham, Tuscaloosa or Mobile hosted their municipal elections in 2021 and are scheduled to do so again this summer and remain on their regular four-year cycle. Montgomery held its municipal elections last year. Huntsville’s elections took place in August.
“This will be new for us,” said Daphne Mayor Robin LeJeune, who won election in 2020 despite the circulation of fliers paid for by the Common Sense Campaign TEA Party that accused him of being a “liberal.” Baldwin County is overwhelmingly Republican.
Daphne, like all cities in Alabama, do not host partisan municipal elections. In fact, an overwhelming majority of cities in the U.S. host non-partisan municipal elections. According to the National League of Cities in 2020, 75% of all municipalities that year hosted a non-partisan contest.
“We feel it won’t be bogged down into national politics like it was before,” LeJeune said. “We feel (next year’s election) will be based on the local issues, and the visions for Daphne and what we will see in the next four years.”
First up: Tuscaloosa
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox speaks out in support of investing state money into the creation of the West Alabama Highway corridor. Mayors and other elected officials gathered on Tuesday, September 5, 2023, at the Thomasville Career Readiness Center and Public Library in Thomasville, Ala., to tout the benefits of adding four lanes to U.S. 43 and Alabama State Route 69 from Thomasville north to Moundville. The additional lanes, officials say, will created a four-lane West Alabama Highway connecting Mobile to Tuscaloosa and north toward Florence. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).
The first city up in the municipal election calendar is Tuscaloosa, the home to the University of Alabama. Their municipal election is scheduled for March 4, 2025.
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox jumped into the fray in October when he announced his intentions to seek re-election. Maddox would like a sixth term as the city’s top elected official. The qualifying period to run for office in Tuscaloosa is Jan. 14-28.
“Tip O’Neil’s admonition that ‘all politics are local’ has evaporated this century, and I suspect there will be attempts to nationalize local elections,” said Maddox, referencing the former Democratic U.S. House Speaker. “I saw it here in Tuscaloosa in 2021. However, the degree of difficulty is greater. Why?”
He added, “In city government, you can’t forget who you serve because you go to church, shop, and live with your constituents every day. Your constituents can connect with you in ways that are difficult for elected officials at the state and federal levels who are tightly bound by fidelity to the party. From the little league park to the grocery store, as a local elected official, you are there for the people who pay your salary.”
Council member Raevan Howard is seeking a third term, and she’s not even thinking about nationalized issues. The issues she’s talking about is $13.8 million in funding toward quality-of-life projects that includes revitalizing an old park in west Tuscaloosa and overseeing the completion of the new Benjamin Barnes YMCA.
Affordable housing is also an issue she’s talking about.
Democrats and Republicans at City Hall? Maddox quotes Fiorella LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City from 1934-1946, “there is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.”
“Another factor that mitigates the nationalization of local elections is that city governments are judged by results and not rhetoric,” said Maddox, who is so far running unopposed. “From supporting public safety or paving streets, whether we succeed or fail, the outcome has nothing to do with partisan politics.”
Media landscape
(AP Photo/Paula Ulichney)AP
The fractured media landscape could be the biggest factor in what kind of issues receive the most attention ahead of the 2025 elections.
Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University, said while he does not believe a majority of Alabama’s municipal races will be dominated by national topics, he does have some doubts largely because of the modern media environment.
“The one thing I would say that might create a better environment for nationalizing these city races is that I would imagine in some of these cities, they used to have more media outlets focused on local issues,” Brown said. “And today, you’ve got so much of the press defining news as essentially Washington-only stuff. The media available and used by these voters, even in small towns, tends to be media outlets focused, if not exclusively then almost exclusively, on D.C. happenings, and the federal government rather than the issues municipal officials have to deal with.”
The types of issues debated by the candidates could depend on the issue of note at the time, and how it’s filtered through an abundance of partisan blogs, social media sites, radio shows and online media outlets in Alabama. The result, observers say, creates the potential for nationalized issues to receive an inordinate sense of urgency in front of local elected officials who have little, if any, influence over the topic.
Angi Horn, a Republican political strategist based in Montgomery, said that Facebook pages that sometimes serve as a news disseminator can be problematic for local officials.
“There is no accountability and accuracy in the information,” Horn said, referring to local Facebook sites such as those entitled as “What’s happening …” in your community. “On media sites, there are consequences professionally and legally but there are not consequences on social media for people who tend to make up things and say things that are true and that are not true.”
Members of the Sylacauga City Council listen during a meeting Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2024.William Thornton
City halls were heated locations ahead of the 2024 elections largely over immigration matters. Those concerns mostly dealt with worries about Haitian migrants, a concern that has mostly quieted since Nov. 5 in cities like Sylacauga and Fairhope.
“The message from me is everyone (should) know that the media source you are leaning on (for information) is a credible source and that you are getting factual information,” Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan said. “I hope everyone knows not to take everything on social media as factual. It will be an important topic in the election that … if you get information from social media or media sources, that it’s a credible source and what you are getting is factual. And if you don’t think what you are reading is factual, make a phone call (to a local official).”
Small and large cities
Brown said while candidates for city government have to be concerned about misinformation in the current media environment, he doesn’t believe they can spread and infect a city election in smaller communities.
“There are a bunch of cities in Alabama with 3,000 to 18,000 people, and those kinds of communities you will have candidates for mayor and candidates for the council who frankly know a lot of people in their community,” Brown said. “Politics is more personal. There is simply a greater connection between the candidates and the electorate. They’ve seen them at the ballgames, at church, and at funerals. There is a variety of social interactions there.”
Horn said around 80 percent of Alabama’s population is represented by municipal officials elected in a city that is not considered among the state’s “Big 10″ — the largest cities like Birmingham, Mobile and Tuscaloosa.
She doesn’t believe misinformation will be a problem in the smaller cities. “When you go to a Troy, Andalusia, Gadsden, they have their own newspapers. They may be weeklies, or two-to-three times a week, but the smaller communities have a much stronger connection in what is going in the local communities than your Big 10.”
She said there are plenty of small, close-knit communities in Alabama where it’s not uncommon to bump into the mayor or a council member at the local grocery store.
“I think there is a lot more of that connection to local government outside of the Big 10,” Horn said. “Will social media have an impact on the local races? Absolutely. It’s harder to combat in the larger areas than smaller areas.”
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin addresses media on Sept. 24, 2024, flanked by City Council members LaTonya Tate, left, and Crystal Smitherman. (Photo by Greg Garrison/AL.com)ggarrison@al.com
The issues in Birmingham and Mobile are likely to include a mix of nationalized and state concerns with more local matters. Both cities are most likely to see crime and public safety rise to the top of the issues debated during next year’s campaigns. Infrastructure is also likely to be a concern, with topics such as roads and housing development as key topics.
Mobile is going to have an open mayor’s race with three-term Mayor Sandy Stimpson announcing he will not seek re-election. In Birmingham, all the local races are up for grabs and incumbent Mayor Randall Woodfin is likely to seek a third term.
Brown said the biggest worry in these cities will be on turnout. In 2021, only a quarter of voters in Birmingham and Mobile turned out to vote in their respective elections. Both cities easily sent their incumbent mayors back into office, and incumbent council members for the most part won their contests with only a few runoffs.
“You will have a small segment of the electorate with an intense view based on frankly, half-assed information, and they could suddenly make a difference in a race,” Brown said. “I like to believe those things will be the exception and not the norm. The norm, particularly in a small city in Alabama, it will be difficult to effectively nationalize a race.”
In fast-growing Baldwin County, LeJeune anticipates growth management being a top concern. He is mayor of the county’s largest city – Daphne – with a population of 27,500 residents.
In recent years, planning commission meetings throughout the county have been crowded with residents who have mostly expressed worries about the rapid growth that continues in the coastal county.
For LeJeune and other incumbents, it will be a chance to tout their growth management strategies that include land use ordinances, architectural requirements, and comprehensive plans.
In other words, the typical stuff elected city officials do.
“We’ve been very focused on the local issues,” he said.
