The Frequency

We told you last week the grocery tax came back July 1. What we didn’t tell you: John Wahl just won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor promising to keep fighting it.

Wahl beat Secretary of State Wes Allen in the June 16 runoff, 57% to 43%, and faces Democrat Phillip Ensler in November. His pitch leans on his early support for the 2023 cut that took the state grocery tax from 4% to 3%. But Alabama’s lieutenant governor sets no tax rate. The office presides over the Senate and casts tie-breaking votes. That’s the extent of it.

Even Allen’s camp said so first. A June letter signed by 24 Republican state legislators, backing Allen, put it plainly: “The lt. governor cannot freeze your taxes. The lt. governor cannot decrease your taxes. The lt. governor cannot raise your taxes.” The letter never called the tax a problem. It just said the office couldn’t touch it.

The imbalance runs deeper. A trust holding land Gov. Kay Ivey once owned paid $1.25 an acre in property taxes in 2018, less than the sales tax on $16 of groceries. Livestock feed isn’t taxed. Human food is. As of last week, neither Tuberville’s campaign site nor Katherine Robertson’s mentioned affordability. Doug Jones’s did.

Alabama’s 21st annual back-to-school sales tax holiday runs July 17 through July 19. For three days, the state’s 4% sales tax comes off clothing, computers, school supplies, and books.

This year’s exemptions are wider than 2025’s. Clothing and shoes now qualify up to $156 an item, up from $100. School supplies rise to $78 an item, up from $50. Computer equipment jumps to $1,173 per purchase, up from $750. Books qualify up to $47, and textbooks up to $78.

More than 300 Alabama cities and counties waive their local sales tax during the holiday too, but participation isn’t automatic. Chambers County shoppers should check the Alabama Department of Revenue’s participating-localities list before assuming Valley, Lanett, or LaFayette’s local tax is included.

HB 475 froze Alabama Power’s base electric rates through January 2029 when it passed this spring, along with expanding the Public Service Commission from three seats to seven. Its four new commissioners — Ron Burgess, Fred Johnson, Demarcus Joiner, and Quinton Ross — won’t take office until January 18, 2027, but the freeze already applies.

That freeze locks the rate, not the bill. Alabama’s average residential rate sits at about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, roughly 17% below the national average. Bills still climb when usage climbs, freeze or no freeze.

The gap comes down to usage, not price. Alabama runs eight or more months of air conditioning season most years, an older housing stock with weak insulation, and one of the higher shares of manufactured housing in the country, per rate-tracking site ElectricChoice. All three push electricity use up no matter what the rate itself is doing.

For Chambers County households, the result feels the same as a rate hike would, minus the rate hike to point to.

Candidates running for federal and statewide office spent more than $40 million ahead of Alabama’s May and June primaries, according to Alabama Reflector’s review of campaign finance filings. The most expensive race on the ballot was attorney general.

The governor’s race wasn’t cheap either. Republican nominee Tommy Tuberville raised $13.2 million and spent $3.9 million becoming his party’s pick. Democratic nominee Doug Jones raised $2.5 million and spent $1.3 million. Both now head to a November rematch of their 2020 U.S. Senate race, when Tuberville unseated Jones.

By that math, Tuberville kept more than $9 million of what he raised in reserve. Primary spending rarely predicts general election spending, and five months out from November 3, both campaigns’ real spending is likely just getting started.

Hazel Floyd is headed back to the ballot. The Chambers County Democrat lost House District 38’s special election to Republican Kristin Nelson on February 3, 1,860 votes to 331, in a race that drew just 2,195 voters countywide. Floyd raised $3,528 for that race, all of it from individual donors. Nelson raised $158,135, much of it from PACs and businesses.

She’s back for round two. Floyd and Nelson both qualified for November’s general election, and neither drew a primary challenger this time, which makes it a clean head-to-head rematch.

District 38 covers southeastern Chambers County and eastern Lee County, the seat Rep. Debbie Wood held until she resigned last summer. Floyd’s platform hasn’t changed: more funding for public schools, economic development beyond Valley’s city limits, and lower grocery and gas costs for what she calls a generation that can’t keep up with either.

“I’m very thankful for everyone who came out to vote for me,” Floyd said after the February loss. “I would not have been in this position had those people not come out and supported me.” She’s hoping more of them show up this time.

It’s one of five Chambers County races we mapped after the June 16 runoffs. This one carries the longest history: same two names, same seat, second try.