We Promised to Publish His Filing. Here It Is — Including the Part That Hurts Us.

Wall of Shame — Today: Drummond

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Drummond Company PAC (Birmingham) has put $10,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted no on the National Coal Council Reestablishment Act, against the federal body advising on coal jobs and policy — one of only a handful of Democrats opposed. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

WE SAID WE WOULD PUBLISH EXACTLY WHAT THE FILING SHOWS

Twice in print this month we told you that when Congressman Shomari Figures filed his second-quarter report we would publish exactly what it showed, and that the number to watch was not the headline total but where the money came from. The report is now readable. Here it is, in full, including the part that does not help our argument.

Between April 30 and June 30 the congressman raised four hundred sixty-eight thousand three hundred seventy-two dollars. He spent one hundred thirty-eight thousand one hundred forty-one. He ended the quarter with six hundred fifty-five thousand six hundred sixty-two dollars in the bank.

THE PART THAT DOES NOT HELP US

We have been telling you for weeks that this is a PAC-funded operation. On the cycle-to-date numbers we published on July 12, political committees had given him two dollars and forty-three cents for every dollar that came from a human being. That gap has narrowed, and honesty requires saying so plainly rather than waiting to be caught.

In the second quarter, political committees gave him two hundred forty-six thousand four hundred sixty-five dollars. Individuals gave him two hundred one thousand three hundred sixty-five. That is one dollar and twenty-two cents in committee money for every dollar from a person — down from two forty-three. Across the full cycle the ratio is now one eighty-eight to one, not two forty-three to one.

There is a second number that cuts the same direction. Small-dollar giving — contributions under two hundred dollars, the kind that never gets itemized because it comes from people who are not writing large checks — was two thousand twenty-four dollars in the first quarter. In the second quarter it was ninety-two thousand five hundred eight. That is a real change and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

THE PART THAT DOES

Now the context, which does not require disputing a single figure above.

Small-dollar money does not appear out of nowhere in a district that has not changed. It appears when a national party puts a seat on its lists. On July 15 an internal Democratic survey of this district was released showing the congressman one point behind a Republican who had not yet been nominated — a number a party publishes when it wants money aimed at a seat. The small-dollar surge and the poll release are the same event seen from two angles. The money did not come from District 2 organizing itself. It came from national email lists after Washington decided this seat was worth defending.

There is one more thing worth saying about where that money came from. For three briefs running we have asked the congressman to name a single demand in the program the Democratic Socialists of America published on July 14 — abolishing the Senate, public ownership of major industry, universal rent control, a new constitution — that he would publicly refuse. He has not answered. He is not going to. The national lists that just sent him ninety-two thousand dollars in small contributions are the same lists that organization works, and a man does not go out of his way to insult the people filling his account.

And when the two quarters are added together, committee money still outweighs money from people, by nearly two to one. Eight hundred twenty-two thousand eight hundred thirty-eight dollars from political committees. Four hundred thirty-eight thousand five hundred thirty-six from individuals. The ratio improved. The structure did not.

HE RAISED FOUR HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT THOUSAND AND SPENT ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-EIGHT

This is the number that deserves more attention than the ratio.

Of four hundred sixty-eight thousand dollars raised in three months, he spent one hundred thirty-eight thousand. He is not running a campaign in this district right now. He is accumulating one, to be deployed in the fall, largely on television, largely produced by people who do not live here.

That is a reasonable thing for a candidate to do and we do not pretend it is a scandal. But it tells you what the money is for. Six hundred fifty-five thousand dollars sitting in a bank account is not constituent service and it is not a hospital that stays open. It is a war chest, and the decision about how it gets spent in District 2 will be made in rooms in Washington by people who will never see a ballot here.

That is the pattern this brief has come back to all summer, whether the subject is fifteen billion dollars routed through the Commodity Credit Corporation to farms a formula in Washington has decided qualify, or a congressional seat financed and directed from four hundred miles away. Decisions keep getting pulled up and away from the people who have to live with them. The further the decision travels from the person it lands on, the worse the information behind it gets — and the less anybody in Barbour or Coffee or Pike County can do about it.

THE OUTSIDE MONEY, ALL OF IT

Take Back District 2 does not pick among the six Republicans on the August 11 ballot. We will not start now, and we will support the nominee on August 12 whoever it is. But we are not going to report one side's outside money and hide the other's.

Independent expenditures reported to the Federal Election Commission in this district this cycle:

Supporting Congressman Figures — one hundred thousand dollars from Rolling Sea Action Fund, a Washington-registered committee, on June 23, for radio and digital advertising.

Supporting a Republican candidate — two hundred fifty-five thousand five dollars from Conservatives for American Excellence, a Nevada committee, on July 9, for media; and twenty-seven thousand nine hundred two dollars from Alabama Christian Conservatives on June 25, for outdoor advertising.

Three hundred eighty-two thousand dollars of advertising in this district, in thirty days, none of it controlled by anyone on the ballot and almost none of it from here.

WASHINGTON HAS PUT THIS SEAT ON THE BOARD

On Monday, July 20, the National Republican Congressional Committee added Alabama's Second District to its list of Democratic-held seats it intends to contest — seven districts added, thirty-six nationally. The following day a new super PAC announced a fifteen-million-dollar effort and named this district as one of its first two targets, though it has not yet reported spending a dollar here.

Both parties have now looked at this seat and reached the same conclusion. It is winnable. That is the whole premise of this project, and for the first time it is not us saying it.

NINETEEN DAYS

The special primary is Tuesday, August 11. The voter registration deadline is Monday, July 27 — four days from today. Fourteen counties changed congressional districts between the court-drawn map and the 2023 map now in effect, which means a number of people in this district are registered but are not certain which race they are voting in.

If you are not registered, Monday is the last day. If you are, check that your registration reflects where you actually live. After Monday the electorate is fixed, and everything that happens between then and August 11 is a matter of who bothers to show up.

We will publish the pre-primary reports when they land on July 30. Same rule as today: exactly what the filing shows, including the parts that complicate our own argument.