With the new year underway, the Department of Justice has yet to release the results of its investigation into the Democratic Party's fundraising platform, ActBlue.
ActBlue money, along with out-of-state donations, has raised questions about the agenda and loyalties of Alabama's two Democratic members of Congress, U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham) and Shomari Figures (D-Mobile).
By April 2026, it will be a whole year since President Donald Trump called ActBlue an "illegal scam" through which the Democratic Party has cheated in political races, and foreign countries have potentially interfered with and influenced elections.
While the Federal Election Commission (FEC) records donation numbers for a federal campaign, it does not receive any information from ActBlue about who is donating to that platform—no names, no states, no ID. This makes it unclear whether donations are from Alabama, out of state, or foreign entities.
By way of comparison, the chart above includes two Republican House members whose congressional districts are adjacent to those of Sewell and Figures, rather than ActBlue, U.S. Reps. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) and Barry Moore (R-Enterprise) receive donations through the WinRed platform.
The Republican donation platform differs significantly from ActBlue in that WinRed has yet to face fraud accusations from a sitting president, a state attorney general (like Ken Paxton of Texas), three congressional committees and investigative journalists.
The disparity in donation influences is marked. Moore and Palmer are much closer to the 50% margin in maintaining Alabama-based contributors. Not so for Sewell and Figures. The combined contributions from ActBlue and out-of-state donations account for 88% and 80%, respectively, of Sewell's and Figures' 2024 campaign war chests.
Also consider the fundraising ratios. The two Democratic delegates have outraised their Republican counterparts at roughly a 3-to-1 or 2-to-1 rate in the red state of Alabama.
Neither Sewell's nor Figures' districts encompasses the state's more affluent areas than those of Moore or Palmer, yet both have outraised Moore and Palmer in 2024.
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