Birmingham Republican Ammie Akin won her party’s nomination for Alabama’s 7th Congressional District in the Aug. 11 special primary and will face U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell in November.
District-wide, Akin took about 73 percent of the vote, 9,312 votes to 3,380 for David Perry of Selma, according to unofficial returns from the Secretary of State’s office.
In Perry County, Akin ran ahead of her district-wide share, taking 225 of the 284 votes cast, about 79 percent, to Perry’s 59.
Akin, 44, is a former educator and co-founder of the nonprofit Hub in the Hills. She holds a bachelor’s degree in special education from the University of Alabama and a doctorate from Samford University, and the race was her first bid for public office. She has said her priorities include education, affordability and crime.
Perry, 63, is a retired Selma pastor.
Akin now faces Sewell, a Selma native and eight-term Democratic incumbent, in the Nov. 3 general election. Sewell, first elected in 2010, was the only Democrat to qualify and did not appear on the primary ballot.
The Aug. 11 vote was a do-over. Special primaries were held in the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th districts after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais sharply limited claims under the Voting Rights Act, clearing the state to set aside the court-drawn map used in 2024 and return to lines drawn by the Legislature in 2023.
Congressional results from the May 19 primary in those four districts were voided, and Gov. Kay Ivey set the replacement primaries under the new lines. The nominations were decided in a single round, with no runoff even if no candidate won a majority.
The redrawn 7th District remains the state’s only majority-Black district. It loses Lowndes County and adds Washington, Monroe and Conecuh counties along with all of Clarke County, joining Choctaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Marengo, Perry, Pickens, Sumter and Wilcox counties and parts of Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties.
The new boundaries apply to the November election and take effect when the next Congress is seated in January 2027; sitting House members represent the current districts through the end of the year, and the court fight over the map continues.
