Nine Days to Pick a Nominee. Eighty-Four to Beat Him.

Wall of Shame — Today: Bradley Arant

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Bradley Arant Boult Cummings PAC (Birmingham) has put $2,500 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. One of Alabama’s largest law and lobbying firms — an access play. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

NINE DAYS TO PICK. EIGHTY-FOUR TO BEAT HIM.

Nine days from Tuesday, Republicans in Alabama's 2nd District pick a nominee. Eighty-four days after that, that nominee has to beat Shomari Figures.

Those two numbers belong together, and almost nobody is putting them together. Every dollar, every mailer, every television spot and every argument in this district right now is aimed at August 11. The election that decides who represents this district is on November 3, and the man who wins it will have had eighty-four days to run that race with whatever is left.

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS ON THE ABSENTEE CLOCK

Before anything else, the nearest deadline.

If you are voting absentee, your application must be RECEIVED in your county Absentee Election Manager's office by Tuesday, August 4. Received — not postmarked, not dropped in a mailbox Tuesday morning. That is in two days.

To hand-deliver an absentee application, the deadline is Thursday, August 6. Hand-returned ballots are due by 5 p.m. Monday, August 10. Mailed ballots must arrive by noon on election day.

Voter registration already closed on July 27. The absentee window is the last door that has not shut.

SIXTY-ONE DAYS OF A FREE RUN

Qualifying closed on June 2. No Democrat filed against Shomari Figures.

That was sixty-one days ago. For sixty-one days he has had no opponent to answer, no primary to win, no money to spend defending himself, and no reason to say anything he did not want to say. He closed the last reporting period with $662,600 in the bank.

That is not a scandal and we are not going to call it one. He did not do anything wrong by drawing no opponent. But understand what sixty-one unopposed days buys: a full quarter of a year to raise, to plan, to book, and to watch six Republicans spend themselves down fighting each other.

THE MONEY THAT MOVED THIS WEEK

Here is what is new, and it is not small.

Outside groups — committees that are not any candidate's campaign — have now reported more than $1.37 million spent in this district's races. The bulk of it landed in the last two weeks, and a substantial new round was reported to the Federal Election Commission on July 29 and 30, with the advertising beginning to run July 29.

Of that $1.37 million, more than $1.27 million was spent by Republican-aligned committees inside the Republican primary. Roughly ninety-three cents of every outside dollar spent in this district has gone to Republicans arguing with Republicans.

We are not going to break that down candidate by candidate. Take Back District 2 does not pick a favorite among the six, and a committee-by-committee ledger nine days out is a closing argument we would be handing to one of them for free. The filings are public at fec.gov and anyone can read them. What we will say is the total, because the total is the point.

WHAT THAT LEAVES ON AUGUST 12

Add it up and look at the morning after.

On August 12, the six become one. The nominee walks out of a primary that has consumed better than a million dollars of outside money and most of what the campaigns themselves had. The six Republican campaigns together were holding about $359,000 at the close of the last reporting period. Figures walks into the same morning with $662,600 he never had to touch, eighty-four days to spend it, and a national party committee that has this seat on its target list.

That is the arithmetic. It is nobody's fault. Contested primaries cost money, and a real choice is worth what it costs. But a party that spends August fighting itself and then wakes up on the twelfth to find the other side rested and funded has a hill to climb, and pretending otherwise does not make the hill smaller.

THE RECORD IS CLOSED AND IT IS STILL THE ARGUMENT

One thing has stopped moving entirely.

Shomari Figures will cast no more votes before this primary. The House is in a district work period and the last recorded vote is Roll Call 283, taken July 23. Whatever his record was going to be in this Congress, it already is.

That record does not shrink because the news cycle is quiet. It is complete, it is documented vote by vote, and it is in the archive at take2back.com. It is the same record in November that it is today. The only variable left is whether enough people in this district ever see it.

NINE DAYS

So: nine days to pick, eighty-four to win, and forty-eight hours until the absentee door closes.

Turnout across the district is expected to come in under 30,000. There is no runoff. Whoever finishes first is the nominee, and on August 12 this stops being six races and becomes one — against a war chest that has been sitting untouched since June.

Nine days. Under 30,000 votes. No second chances.

Show up on the eleventh.