Here come the Republicans. A former state senator and a current one are set to enter the race for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district.
Current state Sen. Greg Albritton announced his intention on Monday to seek the seat in the newly-drawn district. Former Sen. Dick Brewbaker is planning to announce his candidacy on Wednesday, multiple media outlets reported.
They join Montgomery attorney Caroleene Dobson in the race for the Republican nomination.
Albritton currently resides outside of the district – although federal law does not require that a candidate live in the district, only in the state – but told al.com that he planned to move. Albritton said he resided in Conecuh County, which is in the current 2nd District, but was forced to move after his home was drawn out of his state senate district in 2020.
If elected to Congress, he said, he would move back to his Conecuh County home, which he still owns.
Albritton currently serves as the General Fund Budget chair in the Senate – a job that typically lands with experienced lawmakers who are well liked and respected among their colleagues – and is perhaps most well known over the last several years for advocating for gambling expansion in the state.
Brewbaker, in the meantime, is a longtime resident of Montgomery County, and owned a car dealership in the city of Montgomery for a number of years before selling it last year. He is well known in and around Montgomery, but it’s unclear how much name recognition he carries outside of the county.
During his time in the Legislature, Brewbaker was considered a moderate Republican who focused on education issues and was generally a proponent of public education. He recently served on the Alabama Charter School Commission.
Both Brewbaker and Albritton will have a tough road to winning the seat. The newly-drawn district has a roughly 49 percent Black voter population, and when coupled with the moderate- to left-leaning white voters in both Montgomery and Mobile, the district leans towards Democrats.
However, neither Brewbaker nor Albritton is exactly a hardcore conservative and both could exhibit enough moderate positions on important issues to pose a decent challenge to the Democratic field. The trick will be maintaining those moderate positions throughout the GOP primary in a race that will need to attract some of the state’s most conservative voters.
