A one-time “politically exiled” Alabama mayor is returning to politics in a big way
"Sadly, conditions and circumstances, as they were, have led us to a state of not knowing truly what we need as a people in one of the most regressive and backward territories in this country.”
(Photo credit: Brandaun Dean)
Just six years ago, Brandaun Dean became the mayor of Brighton, Alabama, a historic feat for a 24-year-old Black man in one of the most conservative states in the United States. NBC News reported at the time that Dean was “the youngest mayor in the city’s history and the second youngest in the state.”
But just one year into his term, Dean was removed from his post after a court overturned the results of the election—a move he says was the culmination of months of efforts to alienate Dean and question his eligibility to hold office in Brighton.
It all began after Dean’s opponent, Eddie Cooper, filed a lawsuit alleging “that Dean was not a resident of Brighton for the 90-day period prior to the election date.” Even further, Cooper “alleged that illegal absentee ballots were cast during the election and that discounting the illegal ballots would result in Dean not receiving the majority of votes.”
The court dismissed the eligibility claim, but agreed to remove 46 absentee votes from the official tally. Even though 46 votes wasn’t enough to overturn Dean’s victory, it put him six votes short of avoiding a runoff.
The election was declared invalid and a runoff was scheduled between Dean and Cooper. Dean had had enough.
Now, at 30, Dean is setting his sights on a much larger office, one on Capitol Hill.
With midterm elections just over six months away, Alabama’s Senate seat—occupied by Democrat-turned-Republican Richard Shelby since 1986—is one of 35 seats up for grabs in what is expected to be a nailbiter for control of the Senate.
In the meantime, Dean has one major hurdle to clear in the next six weeks if he wants to run against a Republican opponent this fall: the primary election.
Scheduled for May 24, the Alabama primaries will decide who will advance to the midterms. That’s unless no candidate receives 50 per cent of the vote, in which case runoff elections would be scheduled for June 21.
In an interview with The Blueprint, Dean spoke in-depth about how his experience as a self-proclaimed political exile has shaped the way he has approached his bid for the U.S. Senate.
Dean referred to his campaign as both organic and something very personal. Not only was Dean’s democratically elected victory as mayor overturned by a local court, but the decision was a result of a majority Supreme Court decision to restrict voting rights for absentee voters.
Because the Senate is tasked with confirming the next generation of Supreme Court justices—much like the recent confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer—Dean recognizes Congress as the sole venue to expand voting rights and prevent what happened to him in Brighton County from happening to somebody else.
According to Dean, the “conceptualization” of his Senate campaign began back in late 2017.
“I went across the country to various states that I thought might be less hostile, and more receptive to a black millennial candidate who supports reparations and extraordinary reform around energy in the way we treat the planet and green policy,” Dean told me.
Ultimately, his journey brought him back to Alabama, after a phone call from a reporter that changed everything.
“They asked me if my FEC documents were still valid,’ Dean said, explaining “that I was the only Democrat that was running in the state of Alabama.” That has since changed, but back in June of 2021, Dean took it as a sign to recommit himself to his campaign.
It hasn’t been all that it’s cracked up to be, Dean noted.
“What we have found in the last few weeks is the Democratic Party of Alabama certainly was not prepared to compete [for] the United States Senate,” he said. “There has been a compelling falsehood that a black person, and a person who carries with them progressive thoughts, ideals, and policies cannot be competitive and cannot win in this state.”
Dean’s internship on “the last plantation”
(Photo credit: Brandaun Dean)
Dean’s political experience began when he accepted an offer to attend Howard University, where he got the opportunity to intern for the House of Representatives, working as a researcher on a Black farmers’ bill before going on to archive an outgoing member’s congressional work.
As an intern at the Capitol, Dean experienced a rude awakening to just how “color-coded” Washington continued to be, even while a Black man occupied the presidency. There was very little diversity among Congressional staff, he explained, to the point that Dean wasn’t sure whether there was one Black chief of staff on the Senate side.
Dean saw that lack of representation reflected by his colleagues in the internship program. Most of the Senate interns, he realized, were white people who came from privileged backgrounds with help from parents, organizations, and think tanks to sponsor them.
Meanwhile, Dean said all of the young Black kids—who were just as ambitious and hard-working (if not more)—were relegated to the House of Representatives.
“Much of my internship in the House was an insulting experience,” Dean said, calling the Hill a classist environment. “We would often refer to the United States Capitol as the last plantation, based on the speed and the culture of work there on the Hill,” he added.
‘I cannot help you if you do not know what you need’
(Photo credit: Brandaun Dean)
Flipping Alabama blue—the same state that nearly propelled the credibly accused Roy Moore (who was allegedly banned from a local mall for harassing teenage girls) to the U.S. Senate just four years ago—is no easy feat. The seat is considered by many pollsters as “safe Republican.”
Part of the reason so little has changed in Alabama, Dean believes, is the lack of grassroots movements by Democrats in a state that currently houses more than 22,000 people in prisons designed for a capacity of under 14,000.
That number becomes immeasurable, Dean added, when considering just how many Alabamans are connected to the justice system, whether it be outstanding warrants, being on probation, or being bound by parole requirements.
The disproportionate number of criminalized people in Alabama is also connected to what Dean calls a “crisis around labor and the right to work—or rather, the right to be mistreated and disposed of in the workplace without consequence for the employer.”
The consequence of a culture of systemic oppression, Dean explained, is that “most of the people who need this office to work for them are blind to the reality.”
“The Democratic Party has had an opportunity to recruit a candidate and build infrastructure that is really true to the needs of the most vulnerable people in our state, and they decided to forego that opportunity,” he said. “The lack of attention, intention, and neutrality, I think, will be just as damaging to our democracy.”
He described Alabama as a “damning environment for collectivism [and for] an organized proletariat,” pointing out that, in his experience as mayor of Brighton, there were a wide variety of consequences for “even acknowledging the crises that many of our people are experiencing.”
“I'll do everything I can to win this Democratic primary and win this general election. but I cannot help you if you do not know what you need,” Dean said. “Sadly, conditions and circumstances, as they were, have led us to a state of not knowing truly what we need as a people in one of the most regressive and backward territories in this country.”