State Sen. Bobby Singleton of Greensboro will lead the Alabama Democratic Party for the next four years after the party’s governing body elected him chairman by a nearly three-to-one margin at its organizational meeting in Montgomery on Saturday.
Members of the State Democratic Executive Committee gave Singleton 165 votes, about 73 percent, to 62 for incumbent chairman Randy Kelley, a Huntsville pastor who had led the party since 2022. Members voted by holding up printed cards while counters circulated the room, and cheers broke out as the cards went up for Singleton. He and Kelley embraced after the result was announced.
The vote puts a Hale County native at the head of the state party 87 days before the November general election, in which Democrats have qualified their largest slate of candidates since 2018.
House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels of Huntsville nominated Singleton, telling members the party needed a chairman who could raise money and calling for unity once the vote was over. “We cannot let any election go unchallenged on the other side,” Daniels said.
Singleton, the Senate minority leader, promised in a brief speech before the vote to bring the party together and seize the moment at hand. “I want you to know that I hear you, I see you,” he said, pledging listening tours in all 67 counties and an end to what he called the party’s archaic way of doing things.
“We’re going to unite as one party, one future,” he told members, predicting Democratic wins in November.
In an interview with the Alabama Reflector after the vote, Singleton said the result reflected frustration among members, candidates and legislators, saying Democratic officeholders had been left to fight their battles without the kind of support Republicans give their own.
He outlined a 90-day plan he described in three stages, to listen, build and mobilize, that includes visits to every county before the election, fundraising events and direct support for county chairs and candidates.
Singleton does not plan to give up his post as Senate minority leader, which he has held since 2019, and he remains on the November ballot seeking reelection to his District 24 Senate seat. He announced his challenge to Kelley in late July, saying the party needed stronger organization, fundraising and support for its candidates.
In his final chairman’s report, Kelley pointed to gains during his term, including Rep. Marilyn Lands’ 2024 flip of a Huntsville-area House seat and the election of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures of Mobile, and said the party must activate churches as it did during the civil rights movement. He urged members to unite and move past toxicity.
Kelley’s four-year tenure was marked by prolonged infighting. Under bylaws adopted in 2023, the party eliminated its youth, LGBTQ+ and disabled caucuses, most of which were restored the following year by order of the Democratic National Committee.
Kelley is an ally of Joe Reed, the party’s longtime vice chair for minority affairs, whose Alabama Democratic Conference holds substantial sway over the committee. DNC observers attended Saturday’s meeting, which ran nearly six hours and opened with a dispute over whether a previous meeting had properly established a quorum.
The committee also elected Caroline Self as the party’s vice chair. Self, an SDEC member nominated by Singleton, received 139 votes, about two-thirds of those cast, over Tori Bailey.
Self, of Florence, was the party’s 2018 nominee for state Senate District 1.
Doug Jones and Rep. Phillip Ensler of Montgomery, the party’s nominees for governor and lieutenant governor, attended the meeting but did not address it.
Singleton has represented Senate District 24, which includes Hale County, since winning a special election in January 2005, following two years in the Alabama House.
A graduate of Alabama State University and Miles Law School, he is a member of Greenleaf Missionary Baptist Church in Greensboro.
