Alabama chooses candidates for new Black congressional district

Shomari Figures, an attorney and Obama White House executive from a politically prominent civil rights family, won the Democratic nomination to run in Alabama’s redrawn second congressional district on Tuesday night, defeating state representative Anthony Daniels.

The runoff election has been closely watched because of its implications for control of Congress in November, and for the effect of supreme court orders requiring southern states to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and eliminate racial gerrymandering.

Related: Alabama’s Black voters seek chance to be heard after years of being silenced

Republicans currently control Congress by a margin of 218 to 213, with four vacancies. A win by Figures in November represents one seat flipping control from Republicans to Democrats.

Alabama legislators resisted complying with the order of the US supreme court last year, requiring the state’s congressional map to add an additional district that would be politically competitive for a Black candidate. The courts eventually appointed a special master to oversee redrawing district lines, creating a new second district in southern Alabama, stretching through the “Black Belt” of counties with large African American populations.

Just under half of the residents are Black. The Cook Political Report rates Alabama’s second congressional district as “leans Democratic” with a +4 Democratic partisan advantage, which Republicans believe may still provide an opportunity to hold the seat.

Also on Tuesday night, Republicans chose Caroleene Dobson, a real estate attorney and political newcomer, to face Figures in November. Dobson, a Harvard graduate and Federalist Society member, ran as a more conservative candidate than her runoff opponent, former state senator Dick Brewbaker, who served a Montgomery-area district for 10 years.

The Republican runoff candidates had contributed about a million dollars to their campaigns by March election filing deadlines, a sign of how hard fought the contest will be in November.

The campaigns of Figures, 38, and Daniels, 41, differed less by ideology than biography. Daniels is the youngest Black man to lead Democrats in the Alabama house of representatives. He grew up in a small Black Belt town south of Montgomery, but represents Huntsville, Alabama, a prospering north Alabama city from which he has built a statewide power base.

Daniels developed a reputation as a political dealmaker while serving in the legislature, navigating a political environment that is hostile to Democrats to get legislation passed that eliminated state income taxes on overtime pay. But Daniels could not overcome Figures’s financial advantages in a runoff.

Figures is the kind of Alabama political royalty whose engagement five years ago was announced in the New York Times. Figures’s father, the Alabama state senator Michael Figures was a crusading attorney who famously bankrupted the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in the 80s. His mother, Vivian Davis Figures, won the state senate seat held by her husband after his death in 1996 and has held it since.

Figures resigned his job as the deputy chief of staff and counselor to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, to compete in the crowded March primary. His longstanding connections to national politics helped him draw nearly $2m in outside spending from groups such as Protect Progress, a Washington-based political action committee.