Alabama congressional candidate demands opponent take down false attack ad
A law firm for Shomari Figures’s campaign gave a group linked to his rival Anthony Daniels five days to pull the 30-second spot in a letter obtained by Once Upon a Hill ahead of tomorrow’s runoff.
A law firm representing the campaign for a former aide of former President Barack Obama running to represent a new Alabama congressional district sent a letter demanding a group linked to his opponent to remove an attack ad from the airwaves days before tomorrow’s primary runoff election, Once Upon a Hill has learned.
The cease-and-desist letter accused Progress for Alabama—a super PAC boosting Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels—of misleading viewers from the ad’s first statement when it alleges Shomari Figures, who also served in the Biden administration as a senior aide to Attorney General Merrick Garland, of accepting millions of dollars in campaign donations. Trump hasn’t given a dollar to the campaign and it hasn’t raised more than a million dollars to date.
“Your ad against Shomari Figures is false, misleading, deceptive, defamatory and libelous and we demand that you stop the broadcasting of this ad and publish a retraction,” J. Mark White, founder of the Birmingham-based law firm White, Dunn & Booker, wrote in the letter. “I urge you to act immediately in conformity with the matters requested in this letter.”
The letter gave the super PAC Progress for Alabama five days from the date it was sent—April 12—to retract the ad. If the group does not, the firm said it would take the next steps to protect the legal interests of Figures and the campaign. The Figures campaign told Once Upon a Hill the ad is still up.
“Anthony Daniels is running a desperate campaign packed with lies and falsehoods to distract voters from the fact that he can’t vote for himself tomorrow because he lives 200 miles away in Huntsville,” an aide close to the Figures campaign said in a text to me this morning. “Voters know Anthony Daniels isn’t one of us. Tomorrow voters in the second district are going to elect their neighbor Shomari Figures because they know he’s a Democrat that will fight for their values.”
The Daniels campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The ad, part of an estimated $20,000 buy Progress for Alabama placed on cable and broadcast news, also claims Figures would rubber-stamp Republican policies to cut Medicaid, Social Security and rural health care to pay if elected to Congress.
As I reported in January, Figures is campaigning on mainstream Democratic issues, including expanding health care, investing federal dollars in historically overlooked and underserved communities, curbing gun violence and expanding voting rights.
And as I scooped the following month, Daniels has received significant contributions from fundraisers hosted by Republican operatives, including a former GOP Senate staffer. In addition to supporting Daniels’s candidacy, these donors have contributed to the campaigns of US Arizona Senate candidate and election denier Kari Lake, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), and Republican Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama.
“He’s accepted tens of thousands of dollars from MAGA Republican super-donors directly into his campaign and bent to their regressive policies in the state house,” the aide close to the Figures campaign added.
Politico reported this morning that the treasurer for Progress for Alabama is a consultant based in the state with at least four Republican clients in recent years, including some who have endorsed former President Donald Trump and state Democratic groups. The publication also reported due to Progress for Alabama’s status as a pop-up super PAC, voters won’t know the names of its donors until after the election.
The 30-second spot also accuses Figures of not living in Alabama for 20 years without disclosing he was born and raised in Mobile and lived in the state until he graduated law school.
“He left the state for public service—in the form of a judicial clerkship and to serve in multiple presidential administrations,” the firm wrote in the letter, which was also sent to a sales executive at Gray TV, which owns or operates TV stations in five Alabama markets. “Unlike his opponent, who progress for Alabama attempts to bolster, Figures currently lives in Mobile, Alabama, is registered to vote in Mobile County, and his two school-aged children attend school in Alabama.”
Figures earned almost twice as many votes as Daniels in the early March primary election. But a runoff was scheduled for tomorrow because he failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote. Democratic voter turnout was up 133 percent from the 2022 midterms in the primary, according to the National Redistricting Foundation.
Polling from Impact Research shows that Figures held a 35-point lead over Daniels in the runoff, with 17 percent of voters undecided as of mid-March. Figures led in every media market in the district and was ahead with both Black and white primary voters.
Just one Democrat has represented Alabama’s second congressional district since 1965. But in a surprise 5-4 decision last summer, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling to strike down an Alabama congressional map because it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters. The Alabama legislature approved another map violating the law, but a federal court selected a new map on appeal.
The decision paved the way for Alabama to add a majority-Black district for most of Montgomery County. It also empowered plaintiffs in the over 30 redistricting lawsuits across 10 states to continue challenging racist maps under Section 2.
Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell is the only Black member of Alabama’s seven-person congressional delegation.