Michigan Just Did It. Eighty-Two Votes Out of Eighty-Four. Six Days.

Wall of Shame — Today: Alfa

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Alabama Farmers Federation PAC — Alfa (Montgomery) has put $5,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Alabama farm-country money, funding the congressman who then voted no on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the ag and tax provisions Alabama farmers stood to gain from. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

THIS IS NOT A FRINGE ANYMORE, AND CNN IS THE ONE SAYING SO

We are not going to make you take our word for how big this is. We will use their pollster.

CNN, July 30, reporting a survey it commissioned from SSRS, fielded July 23 through 27 among 1,225 adults, margin of error plus or minus 3.2 points:

About one third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults now identify as democratic socialists.

Not a wing. Not a caucus. A third of the party.

And they are the motivated third. Among registered voters in that survey, 66 percent of democratic socialists said they are extremely motivated to vote this year, against 57 percent of other Democrats. They are also the most likely to want the party's leadership and direction torn up and rebuilt.

They are winning, too, and not in safe corners. Zohran Mamdani took New York City. Darializa Avila Chevalier beat Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Melat Kiros beat Diana DeGette, who had held her Denver seat since 1996.

And last night it stopped being a coastal story.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. The Associated Press called it Wednesday morning after a count that ran all night. Haley Stevens conceded and endorsed him.

We are going to be precise about him, the same way we are precise about everybody in this newsletter. El-Sayed is not endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. He does not call himself a socialist. He calls himself a capitalist. Anybody who tells you the DSA won Michigan is overstating it, and we are not going to hand you a line you cannot defend at the coffee counter.

Now look at what he ran on, and what he beat.

He ran on Medicare for All, on abolishing ICE, and on getting money out of politics. He beat a four-term congresswoman endorsed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer and by the retiring senator whose seat it is, carried by roughly sixty-five million dollars — the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in the history of the United States. He won anyway, on more than 1.2 million votes, the largest turnout in a non-presidential Democratic primary in Michigan since at least 1998.

President Trump named the stakes on Fox News Tuesday night: candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America or its members will, in his words, ruin our country.

And here is the part that matters for us, because it is the same principle we apply to our own congressman. Nobody has to carry a membership card. What tells you where a party is going is which candidates win its nominations and which lose them. In a state Donald Trump carried in 2024, with the establishment, the governor and sixty-five million dollars on the other side, the left won it going away from a standing start.

DSA claims more than 120,000 members — larger than the Socialist Party of America ever was under Eugene Debs. That third of the party is not waiting its turn.

HE VOTES WITH THEM. EIGHTY-TWO TIMES OUT OF EIGHTY-FOUR.

We did not sample his record. We pulled all of it.

Roll Call 200 through Roll Call 283 — every recorded vote he cast between June 3 and July 23, eighty-four of them, downloaded straight from the House Clerk.

In eighty-four votes, Shomari Figures broke with his party exactly twice.

Eighty-two times out of eighty-four, he voted with the caucus. That is the caucus a third of whose voters now call themselves democratic socialists, whose insurgents are knocking off five-term committee chairmen, and whose most energetic organization published the document in Section 1 three weeks ago.

The question on a ballot is never whether a man agrees with every plank of anything. The question is which direction his votes push, and whose majority he is building. Eighty-two out of eighty-four answers that.

THE TWO EXCEPTIONS — AND WHY THEY LANDED WHEN THEY DID

The two breaks came ninety seconds apart.

July 21, 9:46 p.m., Roll Call 267. Mace of South Carolina, Part A Amendment No. 19 to the defense bill. Agreed to, 219 to 208. Republicans for it, 213 to 1. Democrats against it, 5 to 207.

July 21, 9:48 p.m., Roll Call 268. Mace Part A Amendment No. 20. Agreed to, 221 to 203. Republicans, 215 to nothing. Democrats, 5 to 203.

The same five Democrats voted yes both times: Cuellar of Texas, Davis of North Carolina, Gonzalez of Texas, Terri Sewell of Alabama, and Shomari Figures. Hakeem Jeffries and the whole of Democratic leadership voted no. The subject, per the reporting, was barring biological males from women's athletics in Defense Department schools.

Now the part he would rather you not put beside it.

On January 14, 2025, the House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, 218 to 206. Figures voted no. He posted a statement the same day explaining why, and it is still on his congressional website: Alabama law already prohibits it, no male athlete in state history has attempted it, and he would not vote for a bill with no safeguards against unwanted sex checks on young girls.

Asked about the reversal, he told Fox News his view never changed, and pointed to a 2025 amendment he says he supported. The reporting did not identify which one.

Take him at his word. Say the belief never moved. Then the only question left is what did.

June 2 — the Supreme Court let Alabama use its 2023 map. The Second District stopped being a seat drawn to elect him and became a seat that voted for Donald Trump by fourteen points.

The week of July 13 — the National Republican Congressional Committee added him to its target list.

July 21, 9:46 and 9:48 p.m. — the only two votes all summer on which he left his party.

We are not going to tell you what was in the man's head. We do not know. We are giving you the sequence.

AND SOMEBODY SPENT SIX FIGURES DEFENDING HIM BEFORE ANYONE WAS RUNNING

One more thing turned up in the public file this week, and it belongs beside the rest.

Outside spending is legal and both parties do it. It is also all on the public record, which is how we found this.

A committee called the Rolling Sea Action Fund, registered in Washington, spent one hundred thousand dollars on radio and digital advertising supporting Shomari Figures. The buy was placed on June 23. The advertising began running July 7.

On June 23, this district had no Republican nominee. It still does not. It will not until Tuesday.

That hundred thousand is not in his campaign account and by law he cannot coordinate it. We say so plainly because we are not going to hand anybody a technicality to wave the rest of this away with.

His own account is a separate matter, and it holds six hundred sixty-two thousand six hundred dollars he has not had to touch, because no Democrat filed against him.

What it means is simple enough. People who spend money professionally, on the other side, looked at this district in the third week of June — before a single vote was cast in the Republican primary — and decided it was worth six figures to start defending it right then.

Nobody spends that in June on a race they are certain to win.

THE RECORD IS CLOSED

The House is in a district work period and the last recorded vote is Roll Call 283, taken July 23. Whatever Shomari Figures's record in this Congress was going to be, it already is. It does not grow, it does not shrink, and it does not soften because August is quiet.

Now be clear about what that record is for, because we have been sloppy about it and we would rather correct ourselves than let it slide.

That record is not on the ballot next Tuesday. Shomari Figures is not on the ballot next Tuesday. He has no primary, no opponent in one, and not a single vote cast on August 11 is cast for him or against him. Anybody who tells you next week is a referendum on Shomari Figures is selling you something.

His record is a November argument. Eighty-four votes, two breaks, a party being remade around him — all of that is what he has to answer for on November 3, and not one day sooner.

He cannot add to it and he cannot subtract from it. There is no vote left to cast, no amendment to offer and no floor to speak from. He can shake every hand in this district between now and November and Roll Call 267 and 268 still read the way they read, and the eighty-two are still eighty-two.

Eighty-four votes. Two breaks, ninety seconds apart, three weeks before a primary he is not in. The other eighty-two straight down the line with a party that is being remade in front of him.

SIX DAYS — AND THE LAST APPLICATION DOOR CLOSES TOMORROW

So what is next Tuesday actually for?

It is not a vote on the congressman. It is the vote that decides who gets to spend the next twelve weeks putting all of the above to him — in debates, on television, in mailboxes, and on a ballot in November.

Six days from today, Republicans in Alabama's Second District pick that person. There is no runoff. Whoever finishes first is the nominee, and from Wednesday morning he is the only one who gets to make this case.

The absentee door closes first, and it closes tomorrow.

Hand-delivering an absentee application: Thursday, August 6 — tomorrow — is the last day. The deadline for applications arriving by mail has already passed.

Hand-returned ballots: by close of business Monday, August 10.

Mailed ballots: must arrive by noon on election day, Tuesday, August 11.

Registration closed July 27. The rolls are final. The absentee window is the last deadline in this election that has not already passed.

A third of that party. A Senate nomination in Michigan last night. Eighty-two votes out of eighty-four here at home.

That is the November case. Next Tuesday only decides who gets to make it.

Six days.