Cory Booker

The backlash to the Supreme Court's Callais decision by Black voters may be the wild card in Rep. Shomari Figures' reelection race.Mother Jones illustration; Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty

The backlash to the Supreme Court's Callais decision by Black voters may be the wild card in Rep. Shomari Figures' reelection race.Mother Jones illustration; Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty

Twelve days before the midterm elections, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former Montana Senator Jon Tester traveled down to Alabama to campaign in one of the country’s most unexpected battleground districts. They trekked to Dothan, Alabama, the “peanut capital of the world,” which sits in Houston County, where Donald Trump won 73 percent of the vote in 2024. It’s now part of the state’s second congressional district, which Republicans redrew to oust first-term Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures after the Supreme Court dismantled the Voting Rights Act this spring.

In 2024, Figures’ election marked the first time that Alabama had two Black members of Congress. But following the Louisiana v. Callais decision Republicans removed Figures’ hometown of Mobile, along with several Black Belt counties, from the district and added the overwhelmingly white and rural Wiregrass region in the Southeast part of the state, which includes Houston County, to dilute Black voting power and turn the seat red.

But things haven’t gone according to plan. On a Thursday at noon, a standing-room only crowd of 400 to 500 people packed a former industrial building downtown to rally for Figures. “Oh man,” Figures said when he took the stage. “When’s the last time y’all been to a rally like this in Dothan?”

“When they gave me the Wiregrass,” Figures said, “they did not know that the Wiregrass looked like this.”

Democratic candidates rarely campaign in a place like Dothan and the rally felt more like a church revival service than your typical weekday campaign event. Tester led the room in a loud “Shomari! Figures!” chant and chest-pumped Booker when he took the stage. Booker joked that Figures, who like the New Jersey senator is bald but 16 years younger, was his “stunt double.”

“The attempt to just grab and hold and retain power,” Figures told me, “is something that people here in America fundamentally disagree with.”

Figures, 41, is young and energetic, with four kids under eight. His wife, whom he met when they both worked in the Obama White House, sat in the front row with their three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, next to his mom, Vivian, a state senator who plays the dual role of grandma and political consigliere on the campaign trail. Figures recounted how Republicans had aggressively targeted his seat. “They took a pen, they carved it up,” he said. “They carved out some communities of people who look like me. Tried to carve in more communities of people who don’t look like me. Then they said, we did it because of politics.”

The predominantly Black crowd laughed and jeered. “But what they did not know in doing that, it doesn’t matter what your district lines look like when people are paying $4 a gallon for gas,” Figures continued. “It doesn’t matter what your district lines look like when farmers are paying all-time high prices for diesel fuel. It doesn’t matter how many farmers you put into the district when those farmers are paying all-time high prices for fertilizer because a president wants to start a war in Iran.”

Afterward, locals said it was the largest Democratic event they’d seen in the area in decades. “I was born and raised in Dothan, Alabama,” says Letitia Daniels-Jackson, a community organizer who is running to become the first Black woman on the Houston County Commission. “I have never seen a rally with this much excitement and this kind of crowd, ever. This was historic for Dothan, Alabama. This has fired people up.”

Both sides agree that what was expected to be a safe Republican pickup is now essentially a coin flip. Figures is counting on anger over the Callais ruling to drive Democrats, particularly Black voters, to the polls, even in deep red areas like Dothan, while frustration over the rising cost of everything will keep traditionally Republican voters home. “We’re seeing and feeling on the ground that people are upset and the data supports that,” Figures told me in an interview before the rally.

The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act was supposed to turbocharge Republican redistricting efforts—and it still might in the long-term—but in the short-term it is fueling increased turnout from Black voters, much like the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade motivated women voters during the last midterm election. The pollster Terrence Woodbury calls it a “Blacklash.”

When Alabama held its congressional primaries weeks after the Callais decision, turnout increased by 10 points in Montgomery—the district’s Democratic stronghold and Figures’ new hometown—compared to 2022 and was 7 points higher than the statewide average. Alabama doesn’t have early voting, so we’ll have to wait until November 3 to see the ultimate impact of a potential backlash to the Callais decision, but Black turnout has surged during early voting in other Southern states that have recently redrawn their maps or threatened to.

The biggest increase has been in Louisiana, where the Callais case originated and where the Black share of the early vote jumped by nine points compared to 2024. Elsewhere in the South, Black turnout has increased by eight points in South Carolina, six points in Georgia, three points in North Carolina, and 2.5 points in Tennessee, according to data compiled by Tom Bonier, a senior adviser with the Democratic data firm TargetSmart. That continues a trend from the primaries, when turnout in majority-Black counties increased by nearly six points in Southern states that held primaries after the Callais decision, compared to a 1.1 point increase in states that held primaries before, found VoteHub.

“Looking at the data in these in Southern states we’re seeing very large increases in Black voter turnout,” says Bonier. Black turnout has risen in 80 percent of counties nationwide compared to the last midterm election, with the largest increases in Southern states including Louisiana and South Carolina, fueled by “very substantial increases among voters under the age of 30,” he says.

Under pressure from Trump, Republicans redrew 15 seats over the last two years in a shameless bid to retain the House. Only five of them, however, are rated solid or likely Republican by the Cook Political Report. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a project of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, recently moved Figures’ race to a toss-up, while Cook shifted it from from likely Republican to lean Republican, providing more evidence of its unexpected competitiveness. Trump’s signature plan to keep the House in GOP hands may ultimately end up helping Democrats more.

“The attempt to just grab and hold and retain power,” Figures told me, “is something that people here in America fundamentally disagree with.”

After the event in Dothan, Figures traveled two hours north up highway 231 for another standing-room only rally in Montgomery, where he moved after Republicans redrew his district this summer. He needs a huge turnout in his adopted hometown to win reelection.

“It’s crazy when you tell a product of the civil rights movement that Mobile is your home base,” he told a crowd of roughly 300 people who had gathered at an old water works building restored by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), the nonprofit organization founded by lawyer Bryan Stevenson. “Because if you are a product of the civil rights movement, whether you are in Mobile, Alabama, or New Jersey, Montgomery is your home.”

The fight for voting rights is uniquely resonant in Alabama’s capital city, home to the bus boycott, Free