Alabama Democrats--you should stand proud.
Although I’m disappointed that we were not able to reelect Doug Jones last night, I am proud of the work he did for our state. As Senator, Doug worked relentlessly to improve the lives of every Alabamian and stood for what’s right. The impact he made in Congress cannot be measured. When we elected Doug to the Senate in 2017, we proved that we can elect Democrats in Alabama. I am proud of what we’ve done.
Together, we executed the most ambitious GOTV campaign in our party’s history with over 5 million attempted voter contacts. We’ve expanded our social media reach exponentially with digital ads and grassroots campaigns. And because of your hard work, people in several Alabama counties voted on Saturdays.
We had a talented pool of Democratic candidates who stood up for the issues that matter. Rick Neighbors, Dr. Adia Winfrey, James Averhart, Phyllis Harvey-Hall, and Laura Casey all ran outstanding campaigns and their courage is inspiring.
We were proud to reelect Congresswoman Terri Sewell to the 7th Congressional District. We know she will continue to lead with her passion toward progress for the people of Alabama. We also congratulate Tonya Chestnut for her election to the State Board of Education.
Turnout in this election by Republicans and Democrats was unprecedented. Although we fell short statewide, we turned out more Democratic voters than have voted in decades. Joe Biden, Doug Jones, and Laura Casey all received more votes than Barack Obama received in 2008.
The work our organizers and volunteers have done in capturing this voter data is invaluable. We have a fuller understanding of where our voters are and where we need to continue to increase Democratic voter turnout. Because of the data we’ve captured, our future candidates and county parties will have a better understanding of their electoral districts and regions.
Although we’ve reached the end of the 2020 elections, there is still more work to do! We are organizing targeted GOTV campaigns for every contested election. We are going to train our county parties on organizing and direct voter contact tools so that we can be competitive in all 67 Alabama counties. And we will fight to break the Republican supermajority in both chambers of the Alabama Legislature in 2022. We aren’t stopping-- we are going to take what we learned in 2020 and continue to build a competitive and competent Alabama Democratic Party.
Despite the pandemic, we found creative ways to organize, reach voters, and turn out the vote. We were able to contact more voters than ever before. We are proud of the work we’ve done. We are especially proud of our volunteers and organizers who helped make all of this possible.
I am honored to be Chair of this party and want to thank all of our supporters, SDEC members, county leadership, staff, and volunteers for fighting through the finish line. Rest up. We've got work to do.
-Chris E.