Larriett on the Senate Runoff and His Grassroots Campaign

In the May 19 Democratic Senate primary, Dakarai Larriett received 29.11% of the 340,214 votes cast, placing second to attorney Everett Wess’ 39.57% and securing a place in the runoff election to be his party’s nominee.

ALPolitics.com spoke with Larriett about the race, beginning with why he decided to run.

“I am running because of a wrongful arrest that happened two years ago, and I have yet to receive justice from that day,’ Larriett began. “What I walked away with from the experience was I needed to change the laws federally and prevent wrongful arrests from happening to other people. In my process of talking about this matter, speaking at the State house, meeting other Alabamians, I realized that it's not just our criminal justice system, there's so many systems that are broken — education, health care, our economy — and so that really became the basis of this campaign.”

With the runoff now being three weeks away, we asked how he thought his campaign was going.

“It is moving at warp speed,” he said. “We were able to, obviously, get all of the (primary election) data, which is one of the most expensive things. It’s really unfortunate for a small campaign, data is very pricey. So, now we have all of the data, real voters, not polls, and surprisingly our internal polls were so precise, but getting down into the County level — that would have been impossible two weeks ago.

“Now we know exactly where to work, where to put the boots, and the beautiful part about May 19 is it affirmed what we knew anecdotally, that we were building a movement that is grassroots. I won Cullman, Alabama, as a Black man, and beat out two white men, so the world is stunned right now. The meetings and calls I'm getting now from Alabama operatives who didn't realize what was happening are amazing, and the doors that are opening are amazing. So, we're going to go right back at it. We're going to bring our digitally forward campaign, and then we're going to layer on the boots on the ground in the areas where our opponent prevailed.”

ALPolitics.com then asked about outside special interests, and if they had been a factor in the Democratic Senate primary, as they had in so many other primaries.

Larriett denied this had been the case, saying “Not my campaign. So, we are a very grassroots campaign. Our average donations are $30 and we very intentionally try to keep it at least 60% Alabama. So with that, no, but my former opponent, Kyle Sweetser, was accepting Republican money, Republican PACs from out of State, so that was happening.”

We then addressed the cost of obtaining voter data, as Larriett mentioned, which has been an issue for several years now with voter integrity groups across Alabama. ALPolitics.com asked Larriett what, if anything, could be done at the federal level to address this.

“Well, I think it's the movement towards publicly funded campaigns, because it's just unacceptable,” he said. “Every cycle a new record is set for spending, so a lot of people just have their hands in the pot here, selling data, selling services. At the bottom line, it should be about talking to the voters, going out there and selling yourself. So you need to know where they are, you need their information to contact them, and then you need to go out and talk about what you will do if given the honor of serving. So that's what I want to break it back to, making it about actually communicating directly with the voter, taking the money out of the process.

“I also will be pushing the State parties and the Secretary of State on the voter files. It's like $10,000 to get the voter file, and because my race is so contested, I will not get it until June 16. So, I have to buy pieces of files because we don't want to spend $10,000 on a Statewide file when we're running a Democratic primary, that doesn't make sense.”

ALPolitics.com then discussed with Larriett that the commonly quoted cost to obtain the complete voter files from the Secretary of State’s office is considerably higher than $10,000, and he clarified his statement, saying “The party does sell what they call the voter file to us for $10,000. I'm not sure what that quote is, but that's the number that I got, was $10,000. I'm referring to my State party, the Democratic Party, and I was quoted $10,000. Maybe that's a subset of the data, I don't know. Anyway, it's cost prohibitive, certainly in the primary.”

We then asked if he had any final thoughts for Democratic voters going into the runoff.

“The voters of Alabama need to know that there's only one Democratic candidate left in this race,” he answered. “I have a life history of serving our community through education, through addressing homelessness issues, through addressing the opioid crisis, 20 years of experience in corporate America bringing teams together, solving complex problems.

“Sadly, my opponent, who is a former Republican and Republican operative, is just ill-prepared for this moment. He is on camera talking about how he would have supported the Save Act, and would have loved to vote for it as a Senator. He's on camera saying that he is pro-life in a moment when access to reproductive care and freedom is constantly under assault. So, the choice is very clear on June 16.”

For more information on Dakarai Lambert and his campaign, visit https://dakarailarriett.com.