Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s office has told city officials it will introduce a new annexation proposal next month, reviving an effort to bring thousands of West Mobile residents into the city limits after a previous attempt stalled in the City Council.
The announcement lands at a delicate moment for city government. The Mobile City Council is simultaneously working to finish a court-required redistricting plan for its seven districts, a process that must be completed by August under state law. Any new annexation vote would add an estimated 15,000 residents to the city, a shift large enough to force yet another redistricting effort soon after the current one is finalized.
City redistricting happens every 10 years following the U.S. Census, when municipalities are required to redraw council district boundaries so that each district contains roughly the same number of residents. In Mobile, population has steadily shifted from the eastern part of the city toward the west, meaning the eastern districts must expand geographically to pick up more residents while some western districts must shrink.
Because a majority of Mobile’s population is Black, the current redistricting proposal would create three districts with large Black majorities, one with a large White majority, one with a small Black majority, one with a small White majority, and one district where Black voters outnumber White voters without holding an outright majority.
Much of the debate has centered on District 7, which is slated to become a Black-majority district under the new lines. Early drafts of the plan drew objections because Black residents did not hold a majority among voting-age citizens specifically, even though they made up a majority of the district’s total population. The plan was subsequently revised to raise the voting-age Black population to 51 percent, along with a larger majority among Black residents of all ages. Some community activists have continued to push for that figure to be raised further, to 53 percent, arguing the higher threshold is needed to offset historically lower voter turnout among Black residents.
Citywide turnout in Mobile’s most recent municipal election was just 24 percent, a figure that has fueled debate among council members and community leaders over how much weight to give racial composition when turnout is low across the board regardless of district demographics.
City leaders have pointed to recent election results as evidence that candidates, rather than district racial makeup alone, often determine outcomes. Stimpson, who is White, won more than 60 percent of the vote citywide in a city where Black residents are the majority. Council members Gina Gregory and Joel Daves each won by wide margins in districts that are roughly evenly split between Black and White voters. Mobile’s history offers additional examples: Sam Jones was elected mayor when the city was majority White, and later lost re-election bids to Stimpson after the city had become majority Black.
Supporters of annexation argue the city cannot afford further delay. Mobile lost out on an estimated $100 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding tied to population figures after its last annexation push was blocked, according to city estimates, and officials project that successfully annexing new residents would generate millions of additional dollars in tax revenue in the short term, with the potential for significantly more growth over time.
Opponents of a new annexation vote have pointed to Mobile’s overall population decline as a reason to hold off, arguing the city should stabilize its existing population before adding new residents through annexation. Proponents counter that the net effect of annexation would still be positive: while an estimated 2,800 residents have expressed interest in leaving the city through other boundary adjustments, roughly 15,000 potential new residents in unincorporated areas have shown interest in joining it, an overall gain of more than 12,000 people. Most of the new residents would be White, but the city would remain majority Black under the change.
City Councilman William Carroll, whose District 2 has seen population losses in recent years, has previously noted that the same logic used against annexation is not applied within the council’s own district boundaries; districts that lose residents are not shrunk or eliminated but are instead redrawn to bring in new territory during redistricting.
With the council’s redistricting deadline set for August, city officials have said it would be difficult, and likely unwise, to attempt to schedule an annexation referendum before the new district lines are finalized. That means any renewed annexation push is likely to unfold over the coming months as a separate process, even as council members continue to work through the redistricting plan.