2nd Congressional District candidates face off in Montgomery debate

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The two candidates in Alabama's redrawn congressional district, Republican Caroleene Dobson and Democrat Shomari Figures, discussed their top priorities Wednesday, including healthcare, the economy and social security. The two attorneys will compete for the redrawn House seat in November.

The Montgomery Chamber of Commerce hosted the Alabama 2nd Congressional District candidates as part of its Washington Brief series. The discussion, moderated by former U.S. Rep. Martha Roby, allowed the candidates to talk about key issues in the district and their plans to address them in office.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the state's previous congressional lines discriminated against Black voters and carved out a new district that's expected to lean Democrat. While the state legislature initially refused to do so, a new map was drawn, creating a new competitive minority opportunity congressional district.

Health care Figures said that the first thing to do regarding health care is to expand Medicaid in the Alabama. "There's no excuse that we have not done that in this state," he said, noting that other than Mississippi and West Virginia, Alabama has the lowest life expectancy in the United States.

"If the state of Alabama refuses to do that, then what we have to do is explore directing funding directly to counties to at least be able to provide some of the preventative type services because we know the issues that plague our communities, the issues that plague the counties and the people that live here in district two and across the state."

Dobson said that decisions on Medicaid should be left to the states, and that rural health care would be her priority. "I will fight for funding for our rural hospitals," she said. "I will fight to ensure that that our rural hospitals that would qualify for certain programs, will fight to ensure that our hospitals are getting the funding and qualifying for the programs that they need."

She also said that the best insurance people can receive is through employment. "So, we need to create more jobs to allow people to have private insurance that are going to pay those reimbursements to keep our rural hospitals open," she said.

Committees of interest Dobson said her top two committees would be the Appropriations and Armed Forces Committees. Figures said he would choose Appropriations and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committees.

Agriculture Dobson said that she supports agricultural deregulation, mentioning her current small farm and the one she grew up on. "Having grown up on a farm, I know firsthand the struggles that folks in our agriculture community are experiencing," she said. She said high inflation was to blame for "making it much harder for American family farmers to have any sort of economic benefit" and that the Biden administration "has been trying to tell farmers what they can do with their water, how to raise their livestock, has been attacking farmers and the ability of farmers to flourish."

Figures said he was familiar with the farming industry from the cattle farm owned by his late father, state Sen. Michael Figures. He said that the decline in the industry was not a cause of the Biden administration. "What we have seen is farming across the country, certainly farming across the state of Alabama, in this district, this has been an industry that has been gradually declining for decades," he said.

"We have seen for far too long, the children of farmers like my opponent, leave the farm and they don't come back. President Biden is not the reason you decided not to continue the family business. What we have to do is make sure that our farmers a have access to capital."

Earmarks Both candidates said they would take advantage of community direct spending, also known as earmarks, in Congress.

"The state has too often been left behind without it because the communities that we have that make up the majority geographically of this district don't receive the benefits," said Figures. "In Congress, I will be at the front lines right after meeting with every single mayor, every single county commissioner, every single school board member, every single elected to take what they need to come up with a plan of action to be able to take that back to Washington, D.C., and try to bring the funding home for that."

"I grew up in rural America," Dobson said. "I know that we have very dire infrastructure needs. We have health care needs, and when it comes to state funding a lot of our state funding goes north of Montgomery."

Dobson said the funding received will need to be sent in a smart manner. "We don't need to be throwing money recklessly at and allowing our federal government to throw money at policy initiatives," she said. "We need dollars that are going to make an impact in the lives of every family in this district."

Social Security Figures said that Social Security "absolutely" needs to be protected, saying that many rely on it to keep up with inflation. "It was something that they were told would be there for them when they aged out, and they did the things that that the country asked and expected of them," he said.

He said that healthcare in the state also needed to be improved so Alabamians will live long enough to benefit from it. "We need to make sure that we are taking serious that healthcare assets, to make sure that people are around longer to reap the benefits of the program that they paid into for 30, 40, 50, 60, years in some cases," Figures said.

Dobson said that she will fight "tooth and nail" to protect social security, saying it's deserved for those who worked all their lives and given back to their communities.

"What my opponent doesn't mention is that folks on the left like [Figures] have been fostering policies that threaten Social Security," she said. "That's just not fair, and it's not right, and I will fight to secure our borders," she said.

People currently living in the country illegally are not able to receive Social Security or Medicaid benefits.

Election Day 2024 is Nov. 5.

Victor Hagan is the Alabama Election Reporting Fellow for the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at vhagan@gannett.com or on X @TheVictorHagan. To support his work, subscribe to the Advertiser.

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