There is no way of saying that Tuesday’s special election in Alabama was in any way a positive for Republicans.
Democrat Marilyn Lands defeated Republican nominee Madison, Alabama, city councilman Teddy Powell by a 62%-38% blowout margin, an unexpected outcome in a seat only recently considered competitive.
For the first time since 2002, Democrats gained a seat on Republicans in the Alabama Legislature, where Republicans currently have a supermajority in both chambers.
What happened?
On Wednesday, national media are heralding the outcome and tying it to Alabama’s strict abortion ban passed by the legislature in 2019 and a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that granted embryos created during in vitro fertilization (IVF) personhood for the sake of civil matters considered by the state’s judiciary.
It is impossible to know how much those issues impacted Tuesday’s…
