Rep. Barry Moore has defeated Rep. Jerry Carl in a rare incumbent-vs.-incumbent Republican primary spurred by a Supreme Court decision forcing Alabama to adopt redrawn congressional districts, NBC News projects.
Carl becomes the first House lawmaker seeking re-election to lose their primary in the 2024 cycle.
Moore’s Super Tuesday victory is a win for the House Freedom Caucus — the band of far-right, anti-establishment rabble rousers that frequently clashes with GOP leadership and whose super PAC backed Moore. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a former Freedom Caucus member and a top Donald Trump ally on Capitol Hill, campaigned alongside Moore over the weekend in Alabama, arguing that Moore was more of a Trump loyalist than Carl.
“Barry Moore is President Trump’s man in Washington and has been from the very beginning. His entire family has and he has never wavered,” Greene said at a campaign stop before the election.
Carl, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and the Republican Study Committee, is more closely aligned with the business wing of the party.
Both Moore and Carl were first elected to Congress in 2020. Trump endorsed both men in their 2022 re-election bids but declined to weigh in this time.
Moore, who represents Alabama’s current 2nd Congressional District, decided to challenge Carl after redistricting combined large swaths of both districts into the 1st District. The new 1st District sweeps across southern Alabama, from the Mobile region to counties in the southeast. The district is ruby red and will stay in Republican control in November.
The new congressional map was adopted after the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s GOP-drawn districts violated the Voting Rights Act and forced the state to create a second Black opportunity district in the state — one where Black voters have a good chance of electing the representative of their choice.
Democrats are favored to win the newly drawn 2nd District, which would give them two of the seven House seats in Alabama.
