Shomari Figures is the newest member of Alabama’s delegation, and one of two Democrats — the most the House has had from his state in nearly 15 years.
Figures ran for Congress after a federal court ordered Alabama to redraw congressional boundaries to include a second Black-majority district “or something quite close to it,” a move upheld by the Supreme Court.
“Almost a third of Alabama’s population is Black, and before this case, Black people only had the legitimate opportunity to influence one out of seven congressional seats,” he said. “We’re gonna take advantage of every moment we’ve got.”
Litigation isn’t done yet, with a trial in the Northern District of Alabama this month expected to wrap up soon. Supporters of the current map want it to stay in place through 2030.
Figures said the legal action doesn’t keep him up at night. “You can only deal with what you can control, right?” he said. “We didn’t get into this to win an election, we got into this to do the work.”
Immersed in politics from an early age, he is the son of Michael Figures, a civil rights lawyer who won a well-known case against the Ku Klux Klan, and of Vivian Davis Figures, who succeeded her husband in the state Senate after his death.
In an interview with Roll Call, Figures described his own path to running for office, which wound through staff jobs in all three branches of government. His first day on the Hill this year marked the last for one of his former bosses, Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost his reelection bid.
Figures said the Ohio Democrat gave him some advice: “Just go to work and do the best you can do, and don’t sacrifice your morals for anything this place offers.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: What is your earliest memory of politics?
A: There literally has not been a single day of my life where one or both of my parents was not an elected official. I was walking around campaigning and canvassing with my parents back in the early ’90s. My mom ran for city council when I was 7 years old, and I was just a kid with a campaign T-shirt on, going door to door.
By the time I was born, my father had been a state senator for almost a decade. My dad and his friends would be hanging out watching basketball or football games on the weekends, and their conversations would center around things that were happening from a policy standpoint, from an advocacy standpoint, changing laws. When you grow up in that world, that’s your normal. It was just always what I knew.
Q: You were a field organizer for Obama’s 2012 campaign. What was that like?
A: I really wanted to work on President Obama’s campaign the first time, but I was in law school, and it wasn’t even a conversation worth broaching with my mother that I wanted to drop out of law school to go work for some guy named Barack running for president. Barack Hussein in America in 2007, I guess nobody thought he was going to win, right? But I told myself, well, I’ll go work the reelect if I can.
And then 2011 rolled around, and I was wrapping up a clerkship, and I wasn’t married, didn’t have any children, nothing was keeping me stationary, and so I went. I was one of the first field staffers on the ground [in Ohio], and a lot of the people I worked with then, I’ve maintained relationships with.
Q: You went on to work in the White House office that vets nominees, and then as a liaison with the Department of Justice, before heading to the Hill. What made you want to be a Senate staffer?
A: I was coming out of the AG’s office at the time, and I had been the liaison, spent a lot of time down the stretch during the clemency initiative with President Obama. We knew, or we just felt, that the Trump administration would try to unwind a lot of things that we had tried to work on.
I honestly didn’t even pursue any other opportunities other than going to the Hill. It came down to two offices where conversations got the furthest, Sen. Brown and Kamala Harris. This is back in January of ’17.
Q: You ended up working for Brown for about three years. What stands out?
A: We were in the minority the whole time. It was the first three years of Trump’s administration, so it was like every day you turn on the damn TV, and it was something crazy that Trump was doing.
That was my first Hill experience, and I learned a lot about how this place works and picked up a lot of policy values. I had a broad portfolio, from immigration and civil rights, to child welfare and consumer protection, [among other things].
As much as I have a legacy from my parents, I also am part of Sen. Brown’s legacy. He has been screaming the message that we’re losing the working class for a very, very long time. And so that will certainly live on with me — an appreciation and a respect for organized labor, for unions, and for standing up for everyday workers.
Q: After another stint with the Justice Department, this time under Merrick Garland, you decided to run for office yourself. Why?
A: I had worked in all three branches of government by that point, and I learned how it works from the inside out — not to be confused with agreeing with how it works in every respect, but I certainly got to see the different levers you can pull.
When you come from Alabama, it just feels a little different. You look at the sacrifice. You have battles that my parents fought, you have battles that people have fought that you don’t even know their names. And you look at what they went through to create this district that we have now, and you see it as an opportunity to take what you’ve learned and use it for the benefit and betterment of the people.
Q: Has anything felt like it’s coming full circle in your first weeks as a member?
A: There are a few members here that knew my dad. My dad died very suddenly at the dinner table one day in ’96. Sanford Bishop knew my father very well. He was born and raised in Mobile, and in fact, our community college there is named after his father, Bishop State Community College.
Bennie Thompson knew my dad, and James Clyburn did too. That part feels not necessarily full circle, but just unique, to work with people who knew your father, who knew you when you were a kid. Like, Bennie remembers coming over to the house and literally me sitting on his knee.
The post Rep. Shomari Figures on opportunity: ‘Take advantage of every moment we’ve got’ appeared first on Roll Call.
