With a runoff election in just under a month for Alabama’s newly drawn 2nd Congressional District, one of the candidates competing for the Democratic nomination lives more than a five-hour drive away from the region he’s working to represent.
State Rep. Anthony Daniels is running against former Justice Department official Shomari Figures in the April 16 runoff after the district was reshaped to give black voters more representation following a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court.
Daniels, who serves as the Alabama House minority leader, lives nowhere near the newly drawn 2nd District, which stretches from urban areas in Montgomery and Mobile. The state representative’s office is in Huntsville in the northern part of the state. His LinkedIn also lists his location as Huntsville, which is over 350 miles away and would be an over five-hour drive.
An ad the campaign is running claims Daniels, as Democratic leader in the Statehouse, helped “steer millions of dollars” into the district, calling him “one of us for all of us.” While Daniels didn’t represent that specific district, he’s alluding to his work in Democratic leadership.
The residency issue is not a legal problem, as candidates do not have to live in the district to represent it. Daniels has previously addressed the fact that his residence is far from the district, as it has been a point of contention among his opponents.
“I live in Huntsville, but I’m the minority leader for the entire state of Alabama,” Daniels said, according to reporting from the New York Times. “So I’m doing work for the entire state of Alabama.”
Before he announced his run, he detailed being raised by his grandparents, who lived in the 2nd District, in an interview with 1819 News.
“At the end of the day, we have people that are currently in office that we don’t know where they live. At the end of the day, if we limit representation based on lines and whether or not a person can actually do something to really have a positive impact on the entire district, that’s my home,” he said in the interview.
A federal court in 2022 struck down Alabama’s congressional map, saying they unconstitutionally packed black voters into a single district and then the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s congressional map last year, which led to a new map approved last October. The 2nd District now has a black voting-age population of nearly 50% and gives Democrats a better chance of picking up another seat in Alabama.
“It’s not a great look to live so far away from the district you’re seeking to represent,” said a Democratic strategist speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect on the situation. “I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker since he knows the area well, but think about how often a member of Congress has to travel between the nation’s capital and their district; that’s already a challenge.”
Daniels isn’t the only candidate this cycle to be competing to represent a district in which he doesn’t reside. Blake Masters, who lost his Senate bid in Arizona last cycle, announced he’s running to represent the state’s 8th District, which is in Phoenix, while he lives in Tucson. However, the distance between the two Arizona districts is about 110 miles away and less than a two-hour drive.
Figures outperformed Daniels during the first round of the primary with a 21-point lead in early March. According to a new poll from Impact Research, he is expanding his lead with 59% of likely Democratic runoff voters to Daniels’s 24%.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to Daniels’s campaign but did not receive a response.
The winner will face the Republican candidate in a district that was long considered a GOP stronghold but was recently reshaped due to the new congressional maps.