Alabama Democrats are trying to gain ground in the traditionally Republican state’s upcoming Senate race as the party charts its path after 2024.
Kyle Sweetser, Dakarai Larriett and Mark Wheeler are all vying for the party nomination in the election to fill the Senate seat being left open by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor.
Sweetser, a former Donald Trump supporter who switched to the Democratic Party, will deliver his first major speech in Alabama’s open Senate race on Tuesday. He describes himself as a “different kind of Democrat” and plans to address a cross-section of Democratic voters in Mobile.
“I’m a different kind of Democrat. I'm a new Democrat, and I'm willing to work with everyone for what's best for not only Alabama, but America,” Sweetser said.
Sweetser has sought to position himself as “a regular guy” with a message aimed at the middle and focused on the economy.
“We have to be able to function as a society without being at each other's throats constantly. The current system is not working for people. People are frustrated. That's what brought Donald Trump in, to begin with. So, myself, being someone from a working background that's been in and out of people's houses, that's talked to so many people throughout communities, been in manufacturing facilities, chemical plants working- I know how our economy works, and we need someone in Washington, DC that actually represents working people,” he said.
The Alabama native said he supported President Donald Trump in 2016, but after seeing the impact of tariffs by 2020, voted for him “out of reflex.”
“It's harmful to the people down here, especially in the south, where we have much less income to deal with and, you know, going in and out of people's houses, working in and out of people's houses, and watching the fabric of our society be destroyed by Trump's rhetoric and by the extreme political divisiveness of two sides that you get to, they get to the primary, and you know, they're two people that nobody really wants, and they get pushed on folks really so going in and out of people's houses, that was huge for me,” Sweetser said.
After the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, Sweetser said, “I knew that I had to do something.” Sweetser became a voter featured in an ad targeting Republicans against Trump amid significant democratic efforts to target moderate Republicans and spoke at the DNC before announcing his bid in his state’s democratic primary, arguing the message will come “straight through the middle.”
Sweetser says that includes serving Alabamians on the economy, on trying to preserve federal funding for programs in the state and being careful, but not against, cutting waste. He describes policy priorities as reasserting congressional authority over tariffs and restoring democracy.
“We need to have representation that looks at these things and brings these discussions up the way that they're meant to be brought,” he said.
But in a divisive political environment, Sweetser is also differentiating himself from more progressive wings of the party. Senior advisor Craig Snyder compares it to former President Bill Clinton’s efforts in the New Democratic Movement.
“As to what he'll be saying — it really does lay out, you know, some very clear differences with the national brand of the Democratic Party, on some hot button things. I mean, on guns, on trans rights, on student loans, on sort of socialist interventions in the economy, like the New York mayoral candidate’s idea about running government grocery stores. He's separating himself in a very clear way from, you know, that left-wing agenda. And he's saying, I am, I am a different kind of Democrat. In fact, he's saying explicitly, I'm an old-fashioned Democrat. I’m an FDR Democrat. I want to focus on economic issues and quality of life issues,” Snyder said.
The message comes after Democrats undertook a significant focus on making overtures to moderate Republicans dissatisfied with Trump during the 2024 election cycle, but now the focus has been on how the party moves forward between more progressive and moderate leaders.
“Sort of the potentially most effective way to moderate the political system at this point is by being a moderate Democrat. The Democratic Party is not, in fact, despite Republican claims and descriptions, the Democratic Party is not owned by the far left,” said Snyder, who also helped lead the group Republican Voters for Harris during the 2024 cycle.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary, though, will still face a red state. Trump carried the state in 2024 by a more than 30-point margin, up from his margin in 2020 and 2016, although voter turnout, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, stood at just under 59%, slightly down from the last two presidential elections.
A late August Alabama Poll found that nine in 10 likely Republican voters approved of Trump’s performance.
Still, Sweetser argues there are “small government conservatives that are highly agitated with Trump’s expansion of the federal government” and that republican leadership has failed Alabama.
“They are the establishment. I'm going to make a moment,” he said.
Candidate Dakarai Larriett compares Alabama to Georgia.
“Alabama has been a space of leadership and civil rights and activism for a very, very long time, and I think very much like Georgia, this is not a red state, it is an incredibly gerrymandered and suppressed state,” Larriett said.
Larriett sees low voter turnout in statewide and municipal elections as an opportunity.
“What we often find with Democrats here is it's a vanity run. They run on very extreme social issues, which just don't convert in Alabama. So we're being very focused in our communication and trying to find allies in everywhere we can. I spent one weekend with the Quakers, agroup I had never met with before. We are going to be talking to the Buddhists pretty soon. So we're building these coalitions all throughout the state that are very non traditional,” Larriett said.
He said his campaign doesn’t talk about Trump.
“We don't even talk about Trump because we're focused on the issues, and we think that that's an opportunity to gather those convertible votes. We don't want people to feel badly about how they voted in the past, but we want them to do better,” he said.
Larriett describes issues Alabamians care about, including healthcare, economic opportunity and education.
“We've got to start with education, that's the investment in our people, health care that's going to immediately bring jobs to the state, and it will address these health care deserts as well as rural hospitals closing. And then finally, economic opportunity for all. So not just opportunities and incentives for companies, but job training programs for people, investment in small businesses and supporting unions,” he said.
Larriett said he left his home state of Alabama for New York to find work where he served his community fighting the opioid crisis and helping unhoused and LGBT youth, but returned to the state during the COVID pandemic. He was sparked in part for his run by the criminal justice system after an arrest in Michigan in which he says police “wanted a total ruin.”
He wants to eliminate qualified immunity and implement a motorist bill of rights.
“Number one, there must be a legally agreed-upon nationwide definition of probable cause for a stop. We're seeing way too many fishing expeditions, and ultimately, they end up with black and brown people getting killed. Number two, when you do stop somebody, there needs to be a scientifically based method if you determine that a sobriety test is needed. So again, no more fishing expeditions. What we're finding is a lot of these tests are really just evidence gathering for an assumed result already, and then, number three, release of information,” Larriett said.
Mark Wheeler describes three platforms in his plan, including term limits in Congress, banning stock trading in Congress and building transit and infrastructure.
“I support things like nationalized health care. I support things like driving wages for our teachers, making sure that they have pay and, of course, resources for their classrooms so that they're not coming out of their own pocket to decorate or to buy classroom materials and so on. I mean, there's so many low-hanging fruits here within the United States that need to be hit. It's hard to prioritize them all and say, yes, these are all major items in the campaign,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler said he grew up disadvantaged with a mother who struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues, a father imprisoned for murder and a life on social benefits. He became a first-generation high school graduate and said he put himself through college while working.
“I realized that, you know, crossing over from being a disadvantaged worker, a blue collar worker, trying to cross into a white collar field has been immense in trying to go from being just a high school graduate making $9 an hour in 2011 to, you know, modern day where I earn enough to actually pay all of our bills on 40 hours a week,” he said, calling it “way more difficult than it should be.”
“We're a modern society, we're educated, we're capable, and people should be coming together to make life easier for each other, rather than trying to optimize and extract value from each other so that we need less people and so really, at the heart of it, that's why I'm doing this, because I want to build a future that my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren can continue to thrive in, and not just for me and my family, but for our community at large,” he said.
Wheeler calls himself a “collaborative Democrat.” He said he “wouldn’t say that I’ve always considered myself a lifelong Democrat.” He said he grew up in a conservative family, identified as a left-leaning libertarian as an early working adult and a Democrat since President Barack Obama.
“Typically in Alabama, if you get a Democratic candidate, it's not somebody you can really get behind. It's not somebody you, somebody you, can relate to. It's somebody that's just not a perfect fit, I guess. And maybe no candidate is ever a perfect fit, but I will say that ever since Donald's second inauguration, I have seen people turning out in droves at events and even just reaching out to me,” Wheeler said.
When asked about Republican criticism of Democrats as radical:
“If thinking that you shouldn't lose your home because you get cancer, and if thinking that you should be paid a living wage if you're working is radical, then I guess I'm a radical. I can’t, I can't really counter. I can't counter in any other way,” he said.
Whoever wins the primary will face the Republican winner in a contested GOP election, including Steve Marshall, the attorney general of Alabama, Congressman Barry Moore and Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL.
The state's last Democratic senator was Doug Jones, from 2018 to 2021.
Wheeler said he’s spoken to Jones “and of course, you know, he gives friendly advice, but we haven't had any in-depth sit-down discussions. And if I asked for it, I'm sure he would counsel me, but I haven't thought that. Um, and part of my reason for not doing that is because I don't want to become entrenched in the echo chamber.”
Larriett said he sees Jones.
“It is very early in the process, and the exciting thing is we have a three-way primary on the Democratic side. We sometimes can't even recruit one person to run, so it's difficult for them to play favorites right now, but I see Senator Jones once or twice a week at this point, so I can't reveal the details, but I am hopeful that I will get the endorsement at some point,” he said.
Sweetser said he’s done joint events with Jones.
“So Doug Jones is only going to support the person that wins the primary. I've done two joint events with him. I spoke at two events with him, one at the University of Alabama and one at a smaller event this year. Also had a conversation with him, but he's supportive. He just won't endorse, okay, until the primary is over,” he said.
