Shomari Figures

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat fighting to keep his seat in Congress, visited a packed Alabama church worship center as residents fight against a data center.

Figures said he opposed that development project, but he also used the event, co-hosted with Rep. Terri Sewell, to pitch his record so far in Congress and make the case for his reelection.

He was elected in 2024.

Democrats in the state had worked for years to get a second congressional district where Black voters were a majority of the population.

“If representation did not matter, you would not have a group of people here to listen and hear about your concerns about a local community project,” Figures told a crowd of about 120 people, Black and white, in Lowndes County.

Republicans will choose their nominee for the 2nd Congressional District, who will face Figures in November, in a special primary Aug. 11.

1. School choice

At the town hall, a resident asked how lawmakers will help address local teacher shortages. There were an estimated 3,413 unfilled positions across the state last year.

Schools are mostly funded at the state and local level, but Figures said he wants to make sure the federal government continues to fund early childhood and K-12 education.

He also said he supported giving families more choices and opportunities, but criticized Alabama’s CHOOSE Act, which gives students $7,000 to put toward private school or homeschool expenses.

“What’s going to be left in public schools is the population of students most at risk,” he said. “And teachers are not going to want to teach in those environments, which means that our public schools are going to fall further and further behind.”

Instead of sending $175 million to the CHOOSE Act, he said the state should commit that money to traditional public schools.

2. Data centers

Sewell has sponsored a national data center moratorium bill in Congress.

Figures has been more cautious, but asked residents if they want a proposed 1,050 data center in Hayneville.

When they said no, he said, “Well, I’m with the people of Lowndes County.”

He said he is not against all development, pointing to a $1.5 billion Google data center in north Alabama as an example of a thoughtful project.

He said companies need to pick sites where local communities want development and be prepared to invest.

“These data centers will facilitate hundreds of trillions of dollars of economic activity, but that activity is currently not in our backyard,” he said. “That’s a problem.”

3. SNAP

Figures serves on the agriculture committee in Congress.

He noted that about 81,000 Alabama residents have lost SNAP benefits due to the Big Beautiful Bill, passed in 2025 with support from Alabama’s Republicans.

He said, if reelected, he will continue asking questions about the impact of the majority’s decisions and trying to help Alabama residents who are dealing with changes.

“The cost of that big, ugly bill was huge,” Figures said. “We know this is going to have a direct impact on our district.

He said he voted against the bill because he didn’t think the benefit of tax cuts outweighed the cost of cuts to Medicaid and other services.

4. Social Security

Figures and Sewell warned that current federal spending is depleting Social Security funds.

Figures said Democrats will work to protect entitlement funds and make sure working people without large retirement accounts can continue to get Social Security benefits.

5. Rural healthcare

Figures said he has tried to work on healthcare issues and ways to bring more services and funding to rural hospitals and providers.

“I currently represent 13 counties. You can have a baby in two,” Figures said, noting that many other counties in the Black Belt and south Alabama have also lost local hospitals, pediatricians and other services.

Figures has introduced a bipartisan bill that aims to push federal funding to Alabama hospitals and others around the country.

“We have to have these basic things in our communities to allow them to sustain themselves, to allow them to grow, to allow them to thrive, but most importantly, to take care of the people that call it home,” he said.