When President Donald Trump announced plans to campaign in Mobile for Alabama’s Republican statewide and congressional candidates, former Sen. Doug Jones figured the president was “trolling him.”

“We were coming to Mobile regardless of the fact that Donald Trump announced he was coming,” Jones, the Democratic nominee for governor, told a crowded room of students at an Auburn University voting event organized by the Alabama NAACP. “He sees what we’re doing in this state, and he’s like, ‘Oh Lord, I need to go down there and try to help somebody out.’”

Jones and other Alabama Democrats see Friday’s GOP rally as serving two purposes. It’s a chance for Trump to stroke his ego by returning to a state where he held one of the first major rallies in the 2016 campaign. And it’s an effort to fire up Republican voters who, Democrats argue, won’t turn out as eagerly as they did in 2024, when Trump carried the state by 30 points.

“Look, he can’t possibly think — given the numbers that we’re seeing in Alabama — that coming to Alabama actually helps,” Jones later told MS NOW. “I don’t think it hurts, but it doesn’t help, and so I just think it’s a distraction for everybody.”

The numbers Jones and other Democrats cite start with the cost of living: In a survey taken during this year’s primary season, 80% of Republican voters named it as their top issue. Democratic primary ballots nearly doubled between 2022 and 2026 — suggesting voter enthusiasm — while Republican ballots declined by more than 20%. And despite a redistricting push designed to make the 2nd Congressional District more favorable to Republicans, a Democratic Super PAC is saying it’s a close race. House Majority PAC has publicized limited results from a poll it commissioned that suggests the race between Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures and his Trump-backed Republican challenger, Rhett Marques, is basically tied.

Figures, whose current district includes Mobile, also sees Trump’s visit as a sign of Republican concern.

“He is attempting to go somewhere where he thinks he will be well received ahead of the midterm election, but I don’t know that to be the case necessarily in Alabama anymore when you look at the issues that people have with fuel prices; when you look at the impact that the tariffs have had with farmers,” Figures told MS NOW during a phone interview Thursday.

Jones, a former U.S. attorney, knows what’s possible when the political stars align. In 2017, during Trump’s first term and with the president’s approval ratings low, Jones won a Senate special election against Republican Roy Moore, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct.

But Jones has also felt the hard math facing Democrats in Alabama. In 2020, he lost his re-election bid by more than 20 points to Tommy Tuberville, the Trump-backed former Auburn football coach, in a year when Democrats won the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Now, six years later, Jones is back at the top of the Democratic ticket, betting that the conditions that produced his 2017 win can repeat themselves in November. He said he was spurred to run by a worsening affordability crisis under an unpopular Trump administration. And he faces a familiar opponent in Tuberville, who is running for governor rather than seeking re-election to the Senate and whose string of gaffes has unsettled some Republicans. Last month, Tuberville told CNN that Alabama voters were willing to withstand high fuel prices in support of Trump’s agenda.

As in much of the Deep South, a win by Jones or Figures hinges on mobilizing Black voters, who make up roughly a quarter of the state’s electorate. When Jones won in 2017, exit polls suggested Black voters turned out in higher numbers than white voters: They comprised roughly 30% of the overall electorate, a high-water mark that hasn’t been matched since.

Jones has little doubt that Black Alabamians will turn out in record numbers again.

“People have woken up to a lot of things, including the fact that Donald Trump has taken away their voting rights,” Jones said. “We saw the Alabama legislature go in and redistrict within 48 hours after that [Supreme Court] Callais decision that came through. People are upset about that, so I think there’s a newfound sense of urgency.”

The modern voting rights movement was forged in Alabama. The brutal repression of Black activists in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday” helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The landmark law sought to dismantle racial discrimination in voting and expand Black political participation and representation.

For decades, Section 2 of the law was a principal safeguard against vote dilution: drawing district lines in ways that weaken minority voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidates.

In 2023, a federal court relied on Section 2 to impose a new congressional map in Alabama, creating a second district in which Black voters had a realistic chance to elect their preferred candidate. The court found that the state’s previous map had unlawfully diluted Black Alabamians’ voting power by concentrating much of the Black Belt in a single district. The result was historic: In 2024, Alabama’s congressional delegation included two Black members for the first time.

But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority sharply narrowed Section 2 in Louisiana v. Callais, making it harder for voters to challenge district lines they say dilute minority voting power. The ruling cleared the way for Alabama Republicans to adopt a map that a federal court had previously rejected, one that makes the 2nd District friendlier to the GOP by reducing its Black voting-age population.

Figures said voters in his district, which includes Montgomery, won’t quietly accept efforts to weaken their political voice.

“The civil rights history there is something that resonates in a unique way and it’s something that’s motivating people,” Figures told MS NOW. “I think we’ve seen this in primary turnout. In the Democratic-leaning counties of the district, we saw turnout increase almost over 20% in some counties compared to 2022.”

Still, Figures faces an uphill climb. Under the new lines, the district’s Black voting-age population drops from 48% to 40%, according to census data. That may not sound like much, but it produces a far more Republican-friendly electorate: Kamala Harris would have carried the old district by eight points, while Trump would have won the new one by double digits.

For now, at least, Figures has the edge on the airwaves. He has outspent Marques on advertising by more than $500,000, according to AdImpact.

Jones and Figures told MS NOW they are also courting other voters put off by Trump’s policies: cattle farmers angry about the loosening of tariffs on imported beef; Republicans increasingly frustrated by the war with Iran and its effect on fuel prices; and younger voters uneasy about the rapid spread of data centers, an issue several Auburn students raised in interviews on campus. Jones has called for a moratorium on new data centers. Tuberville has described them as “game changers” for communities across the state.

“As a person whose major revolves around creativity, I’m extremely opposed to the use of AI in a generative sense. But it also tears apart communities — rural communities like one that I am, I grew up in,” said Barrett Wilson, a 21-year-old Auburn senior who plans to back Jones.

Some students also saw Trump’s visit as an attempt to shore up support among frustrated Republicans.

“I’ve heard from the [Auburn College Republicans] president here. He also told me the same things that I’m telling you: that we don’t want to fight unnecessary wars that raise our prices,” Itamar Sorek, 19, told MS NOW. “This is not America First policy. We’ve seen the corruption firsthand. I think we’re all just tired of it.”

The coalition Jones aims to build reflects his belief that the midterms will not be a “blue wave” so much as a “change wave.”

“I think you’re seeing it play out around the country,” Jones said. “This is a change wave. People are fed up with both political parties, and they’re looking for change. And that’s what I think you’re seeing playing out, and it’ll play out in Alabama.”

Trump’s Mobile rally is part of a multistate campaign swing that took him to Denton, Texas and Durant, Oklahoma, on Thursday and continues Saturday in Vandalia, Ohio. In Mobile, Tuberville is expected to introduce the president, and Marques is also set to speak, according to local reports.

Ronald Ali, chair of the Alabama NAACP, sees the president’s return to Mobile as both a nod to the past and a call to action.

“He started in Mobile when he began his journey. He’s coming to Mobile to try and continue his journey in terms of the influence that he represents,” Ali said. “My reaction would be, he has every right to do so, and I got every right to make sure I get out the vote.”

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From MS Now.