The Alabama Democrat Party isn’t encouraging its members to vote in the upcoming Republican primary despite plans from the party’s vice chair, Tabitha Isner, according to party chair Randy Kelley.
Isner recently urged Democrat voters to head to the polls for the August 11 Republican special primary to try to block former U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Mobile), State Rep. Rhett Marques (R-Enterprise) and Ammie Akin from winning their primary races.
Isner called for Democrats to pick a Republican ballot in the upcoming special primary.
Alabama has an extra primary election in 2026 in some congressional districts due to Alabama recently reverting back to a likely 6-1 Republican map instead of the previous 5-2 map used in the 2024 election cycle.
Kelley told 1819 News on Wednesday, “I don’t want to have a messy contest in the public, but Tabitha is not that credible.”
“Tabitha has always been way out there. She don’t speak for the party,” Kelley said. “She’s ran for everything you can think of and hasn’t won anything. That would be the last person I would consider for any authoritative information.”
Kelley said Democrats voting for Republican candidates was against the party’s bylaws.
“That’s against our bylaws and constitution. We don’t vote for Republicans. We have a rule called the Radney rule. We have disqualified folks for supporting Republicans, for taking contributions from Republicans, giving contributions to Republicans. We are what you call Yellow Dog Democrats,” Kelley said. “The Republican Party has been the white flighty party. The Ku Klux Klan, as you know, ran the Democratic Party during the ‘60s. That’s the party of Bull Connor, George Wallace. The Edmund Pettus bridge was named after the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. As blacks made progress, through the Montgomery bus boycott, social justice activism through that, through the Project C…in Birmingham where they came up with the Civil Rights Act after the Ku Klux Klan had bombed that church and killed those girls and had planned it in a church, Highland Methodist Church. Then you had the Voting Rights Act, of course, John Lewis and that crowd on the bridge and Brown vs. Board of Education which was passed in 1954 but just enacted in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s in Alabama of school integration."
"So, as we made progress through protests, or perceived progress through protest, the white folks went Republican. That crowd that didn’t want us sitting on the front of the bus, left. That crowd that didn’t want us voting, left. That crowd didn’t want us having our civil rights or decent housing or equal education to their children. They left and went Republican. That’s what you got in that Republican Party so why in the world would we vote for them. Somebody would have to be smoking something serious to think we are going to be voting for some Republicans," he added.
Kelley said he planned to run for re-election as party chair at the upcoming executive committee meeting on August 8 in Montgomery.
Isner has also accused Joe Reed, vice chair of Minority Affairs for the Alabama Democrat Party, of violating campaign finance law and illegal electioneering.
Reed told 1819 News, “I don’t have no respect for nothing Tabitha says.”
“She just said that. She’s supposed to pay, she wouldn’t pay. Everybody has got to pay to help to get the vote out,” he added. “She wouldn’t pay. That’s all. Nobody gets along with her. Nobody. She has no standing.”
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