Southern Democratic legislators talk strategy in face of Republican supermajorities

Yahoo

07-03-2025

Kareem Crayton of the Brennan Center for Justice (right) moderated a panel of southern Democratic legislators at Alabama State University on Thursday March 6, 2025. The panel discussed strategies to navigate Republican supermajorities in state legislatures. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)
Democrats serving in super minorities in several southern states said at an Alabama State University forum Thursday that they must microtarget constituents, leverage social media and find ways to change what they feel are harmful laws.
The event, sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice, brought Democratic legislators from Alabama, Tennessee and other states to share tactics.
Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said he is trying to appeal to constituents who voted for Republicans.
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'I have been speaking on more right-wing stations in the last two months than I have in the last 10 years, but it is working,' he said. 'They feed them a soundbite, and I feed them the details of what is not happening in their community, and we are beginning to see a shift in a lot of activity on the ground in these districts.'
Republicans enjoy near complete control of the state governments throughout the South, with either majority or supermajority status in just about every state south of the Mason Dixon line. As in Alabama, voting in most of those states is racially polarized, with whites tending to support Republicans and Blacks tending to support Democrats.
'In the South, the residuals of white supremacy, fear of being politically dominated by Black folks, resonates the same way that it resonated in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, that it resonated at the turn of the century,' said Howard Robinson, an archivist and professor of history at Alabama State University, who helped organize the event. 'I think in terms of the politics of Alabama, race is still the center of that, of the dynamic in Alabama.'
Single-party control by Republicans in much of the South for the past two decades allows lawmakers to pass more extreme bills.
'It really means it is possible to have unfettered access to passing legislation,' said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Washington D.C. for the Brennan Center for Justice and moderator of the panel, said in an interview following the event. 'If you are not part of that majority, or not part of the party that controls the government, there are real challenges to figure out how to, yourself, have a voice in the process, or represent your constituents' concerns in the process of changing legislation they view as unpopular or unhelpful.'
Daniels said he is in a unique position that he can negotiate with majority Republicans to shape legislation, and he has tools he can deploy different tactics to influence the opposition. One is identifying districts where party affiliations are shifting.
'Most folks in the leadership on the other side, that are on committees, are moderate Republicans,' Daniels said. 'Their moderateness has to be reflected in the voting electorate, and so what we do is utilize their constituents, and communicate with their constituents in order to drive pressure on them, so some things can stay off the calendar.'
Daniels said he also solicits the help of Democratic colleagues to challenge Republicans at the microphone to make them uncomfortable because 'they don't like to be challenged.'
'Rep. Mary Moore, (D-Birmingham), I love her to death,' Daniels said. 'She is the best defensive player you could ask for, and so when I get angry with them, I send Rep. Mary Moore to the leadership meetings.'
Media attention is also important. Rep. Charlane Oliver of Tennessee said her Democratic colleagues organized a walk out during a speech from the governor.
'No one is talking about the governor's state of the state address that night,' she said. 'Everyone is still talking about the walkout. I think we have to continue to push back in unconventional ways in the Legislature to get our message out to the media.'
Daniels also said he takes advantage of targeted advertisements to publicize the party's message to the public. He takes an issue, such as NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding freeze, and directs it toward areas that will be significantly affected by the issue.
'I do Google ads in those zip codes to put articles about the funding in the community that it actually impacts,' Daniels said. 'Once they click on that article in the Google ad, we run another article behind it that talks about someone who lost a job because of the NIH funding, or we do another ad that talks about someone on a waiting list to get a kidney or some type of organ transplant because of the experienced cut in funding.'
There are few other tactics available to Democrats, Robinson said.
'That minority party, in this case Democrats, can't stop legislation,' he said. 'They might be able to filibuster, or they might be able to sue, or they could negotiate, but the Republican Party has enough of a majority that it could vote to shut down discussion, they could vote in any legislation without Democratic say so.'
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