The Alabama Political Reporter recently spoke with Dakarai Larriett, the former executive, entrepreneur and criminal justice reform advocate running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in Alabama. Larriett discussed his campaign’s progress, the fast-approaching 2026 primary elections, and several other issues—including his ongoing lawsuit against Michigan State Police over an unlawful arrest in 2024.
Larriett began our conversation by detailing the growth his campaign has seen since he announced his candidacy in April of last year.
“In that time we’ve been to 30-plus counties throughout the state, so we’re getting close to that 67 number and more and more events are dropping onto the calendar,” Larriett explained. “We’ve really focused on building what I consider to be a nationwide campaign, so a real campaign to take back our Senate.”
“And what does that look like? We’re raising money and getting attention from publications from coast to coast. So there’s some days now where I’m on two, three podcasts in a day, so those will start to hit over the next couple of weeks,” he continued. “But we’re really getting a lot of excitement, particularly from the young people.”
Larriett said that he has recently been coordinating with Democratic groups on college campuses across the state to build out a youth volunteer program for canvassing and phone banking ahead of the May Democratic primary. That support, along with connections he has made with prominent Democrats while campaigning, have been encouraging signs for Larriett.
“Before he was a candidate, I spoke to Senator [Doug] Jones and he actually encouraged me in my fundraising… I did a little research and realized that in Senator Jones’ first race he raised about $150,000 in his primary, so the money really came after the primary win,” Larriett said. “We closed out the year at $100,000, that was not the number I had in mind, but we did it, and again the momentum is really exciting.”
In taking a national approach to his campaign, Larriett has pursued several fundraising opportunities outside of Alabama. Larriett told APR that he had just returned from an event in Washington D.C. and that he has multiple fundraisers planned in New York City.
“That’s how Democrats can win,” Larriett said. “We just don’t get PAC money and corporate money like our Republican opponents in-state.”
In less than a year of campaigning, Larriett said he has been most surprised by how quickly his campaign was able to build out a large network of fellow Democratic candidates and politicians.
“I just attended [Lieutenant Governor candidate] Phillip Ensler’s event and realized that I knew half the room there and I’ve only been campaigning since April,” Larriett said. “I recently wrote a book and it really touched a lot of salient points going on in the state around criminal justice reform. I happened to meet Governor [Don] Siegelman at an event and I gave him a copy of the book, and he read it and was very complimentary. Those are the kinds of experiences I just never could have expected or anticipated a year ago when I thought about doing this.”
In addition to Larriett, three other candidates are currently running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Alabama: Mobile businessman Kyle Sweetser, who gained national prominence as a former Trump voter-turned-critic at the 2024 Democratic National Convention; U.S. military veteran Lamont Lavender; and Heflin-born chemist Mark Wheeler.
Larriett told APR that he believes his advocacy work—both on the campaign trail and through his extensive background in volunteering—makes him better suited to take on the role of U.S. Senator than his fellow candidates.
“What separates me is the actual work,” Larriett said. “I am not getting on stage and saying, ‘I’m going to do,’ ‘I will do,’ I’m saying, ‘this is what I’m doing now. This is how I’m advocating for the community.'”
“I went to Washington D.C. four times last year in protest of the Big Beautiful Bill, for my own networking, and building relationships to allow me to be Day One-ready and my campaign. While I’ve never served as an elected official, I’ve spent 20 years in public service, so again, that separates me because I’ve been advocating for policies that make life better for Americans and Alabamians my entire adult life. So that’s the biggest separator.”
Larriett added that he also believes he has a more fundamental understanding of the issues facing everyday Alabamians than his fellow candidates.
“As someone who grew up here in the state, had a father in the Army, a mom who is a teacher, who has been a teacher my entire life, I know how important it is to invest in our education,” Larriett stated. “And also, as someone who’s been a victim of a failed criminal justice system, I know what that school to prison pipeline looks like and I have already developed ideas for how we stop that and how we make policing more fair and just within the state.”
“In fact, I will be speaking at a panel on criminal justice reform and gun violence safety over the weekend, as well as speaking on Martin Luther King Day,” he continued. “So, [I’m] already representing my community and bringing innovative ideas about how we create a more just society here in the state.”
Larriett’s emphasis on criminal justice reform has been a pillar of his campaign since the beginning and stems from his own experience being wrongfully detained by Michigan State Police in 2024.
In the early morning hours of April 10, 2024, Larriett was pulled over by two state police officers in Benton Harbor, Michigan who alleged he had rolled through a red light. Despite passing seven sobriety tests, Larriett was still detained. He alleges that the officers used homophobic and racist language against him and forced him to relieve himself in a toilet in full view of the jail booking area, accusing Larriett of drug trafficking by ingestion.
Never charged with a crime, Larriett went on to file a $10 million lawsuit against the Michigan State Police. After a Michigan District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit last year, Larriett appealed the case to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals where oral arguments will be heard next month.
“There were absolute errors made in the lower court and this is an opportunity now to speak to them, namely that the case was dismissed due to qualified immunity, and this is why I spoke out against ‘Back the Blue’ [House Bill 202] at the Alabama Statehouse last year,” Larriett explained. “Now a new Back the Blue Act is being introduced federally, so I have a lot of concerns about these laws which are basically preventing victims the public from getting justice when things go wrong.”
Larriett added that he sees many parallels between the public outcry over the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Immigration Customs Enforcement, ICE, agent Jonathan Ross and his own desire for increased accountability and transparency from law enforcement.
“It’s just horrific what happened. The one fortunate thing is that we have multiple angles of video, and that is driving the right discussions and the protest,” Larriett said of Good’s killing. “And despite the fact that, just as in my case, the government is obstructing justice and not cooperating in terms of the investigation, there will certainly be repercussions because so many people saw it.”
“That’s really the focus of my proposed legislation, the Motorist Bill of Rights, is creating that transparency that drives the accountability, because there are just so many negative bad behaviors that continue because of the lack of accountability,” Larriett added. “That is my biggest concern is that now the federal government is not even sharing information with the local authorities that want to find justice… it’s getting to the point where the public has no protections and all of the protections are going to law enforcement, and this does not create trust within communities and it doesn’t make us safer.”
APR asked Larriett if he supports abolishing ICE.
“It is, I think, an organization that is beyond reform at this point. From the top down, it has lost the trust of the public,” Larriett replied. “Now I want to be clear, we still have to enforce our borders. ICE was not always around, it’s a relatively new organization. I think that it has lost public trust and credibility, and I think that the functions of ensuring that our borders are protected can move to other organizations and we need to go through a very stringent reform process and ensure that we are treating citizens and even immigrants, of course, with respect and due process.”
In addition to criticizing the Trump administration’s weaponization of ICE, Larriett also called the administration’s recent assault on Venezuela which resulted in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “illegal in so many different directions” and said that Congress needs to “assert its own Article I powers… namely the power of the purse and the right to declare war.”
“We have a lot of work to do in terms of codifying our values and ensuring that we lessen the powers of the executive branch, because now we see what it looks like when you have a king,” Larriett said.
While Larriett does believe that the Democratic party has had some wins during Trump’s second term in office, he also believes they need to do a better job coordinating their messaging and presenting a united front as an opposition party moving forward.
“I think that there have certainly been some wins and I think some big wins are coming soon… I think a really good job was done with bringing healthcare to the forefront of people’s minds and framing the government shutdown, I think that was really positive,” Larriett said. “I think that there are just so many different unlawful and egregious activities of the Trump administration happening everyday, it’s hard to get ahead of them and communicate with the base properly, so that’s probably my biggest complaint… folks don’t know the right source, the official source, the most credible source for what’s happening, and it’s also difficult for folks to understand what they are doing and able to do as an opposition party.”
“I would like to hear and see more communication around Article I lawsuits,” he added. “I know that some of them are coming up over the next couple of months, but that’s because I really follow this type of thing, I don’t think that the public gets it, they believe that Congress is just not working.”
For now, Larriett is focused on raising awareness for the upcoming 2026 elections and his own Senate campaign.
“We have a lot of work to do to get the public aware that we have elections coming, that there is a primary and that they need to show up, and it will continue to build—it’s still very, very early for the general public,” Larriett said. “I’m focused on every opportunity to build new partnerships and relationships, and being visible in my community.”
