Civic life
Campaigns, community outreach, and advocacy — where the questions I study meet the people they affect.
Policy, district, demographic, and community research for campaign strategy and constituent outreach. Organized voter and campaign datasets for mapping, canvassing, and phone-banking; designed website content, standardized email communications, and built volunteer onboarding procedures.
Advocacy for children within child-welfare, judicial, educational, and social-service systems — coordinating with social workers, legal professionals, educators, and service providers.
Coordinated outreach on social inequities, access to resources, and civil rights; built relationships with local organizations to expand public education and legal-resource information.
Why I support them
There's real momentum building in Alabama right now. Madison County's Democratic primary turnout nearly tripled between 2022 and 2026 — from around 12,000 votes to more than 35,000 — and the Democratic share of the primary electorate jumped from 19% to 53%. People are calling it a possible blue wave, and honestly, being part of that energy on the ground — training volunteers, mapping voter data, watching people show up who haven't shown up in years — has been one of the most exciting things I've been part of. These are the candidates I'm backing this cycle, and the one campaign I'm interning for directly.
Source: al.com — "Alabama saw huge surge in Democratic voting in 2026 primary"
Interning for this campaign
Alabama House District 20 — Huntsville
I'm the Coordinator (Intern) on James's campaign, and I've seen up close how much care he puts into this race. I manage voter file data and mapping, help train volunteers, and dig into policy research — and every time I bring him something, he actually reads it and asks good questions back. He spent 33 years running his own gymnastics business here in Huntsville before going to law school, so he understands what it's like to make payroll and keep a small business alive in this state. That background shows up in his platform: expanding Medicaid, fixing infrastructure instead of pouring more money into prisons, and investing in public education. He's not running on slogans — he's running on the same practical, show-up-and-do-the-work ethic he built his business on, and I believe in it.
Also on my ballot
I've believed in Doug Jones since his 2020 Senate race, and losing that one to Tommy Tuberville still stings. Now he's running for governor, and it feels like a rematch I've been waiting years for. I'm backing him again — with more energy this time, not less.
Visit dougjones.com →I actually worked with Kimberly directly — she served as Guardian ad Litem for a foster child in my care, and she was phenomenal. The care she took with that case, the way she fought for that child's voice to actually be heard, has stuck with me ever since. Knowing how she shows up for people, I have no doubt she'll be an incredible judge.
Visit krucker4judge.com →Andrew is a Huntsville plumber running on term limits, a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks, and basic ethics reform. There's something refreshing about a candidate whose platform is this grounded — no stock portfolio to protect, just a plainspoken case for accountability.
Visit sneedforcongress.com →Marilyn flipped this seat in 2024 running squarely on reproductive rights and maternal health, and she's kept that focus front and center since taking office. In a state where those issues are constantly under threat, having someone in the legislature who won't back down on them matters enormously to me.
Visit marilynlands.com →Jared's campaign line is "loving your neighbor isn't a slogan," and his record backs it up — years working in affordable housing and neighborhood development before running. He's been outspoken against Alabama's $1.2 billion prison spending, arguing that money belongs in housing and communities instead. I agree completely.
Visit slussforsenate.org →Laura has represented this district since 1993, and that kind of institutional memory is valuable in a legislature this fractious — she knows how the process actually works and how to get things through it. Experience like hers is exactly what makes a coalition legislature function.
Thomas is a Madison County native and software engineer, running as a family man focused squarely on infrastructure and managing Huntsville's rapid growth responsibly. Local growth this fast needs people paying close attention to the practical details, and that's exactly his focus.
Visit thomasforhuntsville.com →Liliana is an educator, entrepreneur, and community volunteer who went through Huntsville's Citizens Police Academy — the kind of hands-on civic homework that tells you someone is serious about understanding how the city actually works before asking to help run it. Her focus on transparent budgets and housing affordability is exactly what this council needs.
Everett came out of the runoff to face Barry Moore, and honestly a competitive Senate race in Alabama is the kind of thing I didn't expect to be excited about this cycle. He's exactly the kind of statewide challenger this blue wave needs to actually mean something in November.
Jason has the SPLC Action Fund's endorsement, which tells you a lot about where he stands on fairness in the courtroom. After what I saw watching Kimberly work a case from the inside, I've become a lot more invested in who actually sits on our county's benches — and Jason is one of the good ones.
Visit jasonjonesforjudge.com →Another SPLC Action Fund-endorsed judicial candidate on my list this cycle — I'm genuinely encouraged by how many people are stepping up to run for these local judgeships. These are the seats that touch people's lives the most directly, and Raven's candidacy is one I'm glad to see.
Forrest is one of the newer names on my radar this cycle, running for House District 21. I like that Madison County's Democratic bench is deep enough now that I'm still discovering candidates I want to back — that alone says something about the momentum here.
Visit forrestforalabama.com →John is running for Senate District 3, and having someone on our ballot willing to run in a tougher district is exactly the kind of effort that builds a bench for the future, win or lose this cycle. I'm rooting for him.
Visit dickey4alabama.com →Rudolph won his runoff for Senate District 2, and I'm glad to see him carrying that momentum forward. Every seat we hold or flip in this legislature matters for how much leverage a coalition majority actually has.
Brett is our nominee for Madison County Sheriff, and local law enforcement leadership is one of those races people skip over that ends up mattering more than almost anything else on the ballot. I'm paying attention to this one.
Quinn is running for Superintendent of Schools, and after everything I've learned digging through education funding history for my Avalon research, I don't take school leadership races lightly anymore. Who runs our schools shapes a county for a generation.
Beyond the ballot
Something else I pay close attention to, especially given how much of my research is about how surveillance and control have historically fallen hardest on Black communities: automated license plate readers, or ALPRs. Most are made by a company called Flock Safety — cameras that photograph every car that passes, logging location, time, and identifying details into a searchable, shareable database. No warrant required.
The more I've read into this, the more it looks like the same pattern I study in my plantation-era work, just running on modern infrastructure. Investigations this year found law enforcement agencies running Flock searches using racial slurs targeting Romani communities, agencies tracking protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, and one query in Texas that swept across more than 83,000 cameras nationwide while investigating a woman for a self-managed abortion.
I don't think this is really about public safety. It's surveillance capitalism operating with a badge attached — a private company selling government agencies a nationwide tracking network with almost no oversight, then treating backlash as anti-police. It's warrantless, it disproportionately touches Black and brown communities and immigrants, and it feeds directly into the same carceral system my research tries to hold accountable.
If you want to see what's already watching you, DeFlock is a free, crowdsourced map of these cameras — you can look up your own town.
Approach
Policy positions grounded in data, history, and the lived record — not vibes.
Years inside real institutions taught me how they actually work — and where they break.
Datasets, volunteers, and voters: the unglamorous infrastructure democracy runs on.
