Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch has endorsed former U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl for Alabama’s 1st Congressional District as the Aug. 11 special Republican primary approaches. Burch announced his endorsement in a video shared by Carl’s campaign, calling the former congressman a longtime friend and urging voters to support his return to Washington. The endorsement puts one of Mobile County’s most visible law enforcement figures squarely behind Carl’s comeback bid, and it arrives at a moment when the crowded Republican field is working to consolidate support across the district’s coastal counties ahead of a primary that will be decided in a single round of voting.
“We have an upcoming election on August 11th, and I’m asking everyone to join me in supporting my good friend Jerry Carl,” Burch said. “I’ve known Jerry for over 15 years. He’s a businessman at heart who has served us as a Mobile County Commissioner as well as a U.S. Congressman.”
“Jerry will go to D.C. as a public servant and stand up for us each and every day,” Burch continued. “I hope everyone joins me by voting for my friend Jerry Carl on August 11th.”
Carl thanked Burch for his support and said he looks forward to continuing to support law enforcement in Mobile. The relationship between the two men stretches back well before either held his current office, stretching across Carl’s years on the Mobile County Commission and Burch’s rise through the Sheriff’s Office ranks before voters elected him sheriff. For Carl’s campaign, the sheriff’s backing offers both a symbolic boost — an explicit law-enforcement seal of approval in a district where support for police carries real weight with Republican primary voters — and a practical one, in the form of a well-known surrogate with a built-in network across Mobile County.
Carl’s record in Congress
Carl represented Alabama’s 1st Congressional District from 2021 through 2025 and served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Committee during his time in office. Those assignments mattered to the district he served: Armed Services oversight touches the shipbuilding, aviation and defense-support work that anchors the economies of Mobile and the surrounding Gulf Coast, while a seat on Appropriations gave the freshman congressman a hand in the federal spending decisions that fund port projects, military installations and community investments across south Alabama.
Before his congressional tenure, Carl built his career in the private sector and served on the Mobile County Commission, where his portfolio included the county’s road program and infrastructure spending. He has framed his campaign around that combination — business experience, county government service and two terms in Washington — as he works to reclaim the seat he held for four years.
The Aug. 11 special Republican primary will be decided in a single winner-take-all vote, with no runoff to follow. That structure shapes everything about how the candidates campaign. In a conventional Alabama primary, a candidate can finish first with a plurality and then face a head-to-head runoff against the runner-up, giving second-tier campaigns time to consolidate. With no runoff, the winner on Aug. 11 takes the nomination outright, which puts a premium on name recognition, organized ground games and coalition-building across the district’s many counties — and explains why endorsements like Burch’s are being fought over so vigorously.
A crowded field for a vacant seat
The race, which drew a crowded field of Republican candidates, is expected to determine who represents coastal Alabama in Congress following the seat’s vacancy earlier this year. Special elections of this kind compress the political calendar into a handful of months, leaving campaigns little time to build the name identification that would normally accumulate over a full cycle. Candidates have leaned on county party events, civic club appearances and a steady stream of endorsements to stand out, and the winner-take-all format has made every county organization and every prominent backer count.
Burch joins a growing list of prominent Republicans behind Carl’s campaign. President Donald Trump, Manufacture Alabama and the Gulf United Metro Business Organization have all endorsed Carl’s bid, and U.S. Sen. Katie Britt has also publicly supported Carl and contributed $10,000 to his campaign. The combination spans the full range of a Republican coalition in south Alabama: a former president whose endorsement dominates primary contests statewide, a statewide industrial association speaking for manufacturers, a regional business organization rooted in the Gulf Coast’s metro economy, and the state’s junior senator.
Manufacture Alabama’s endorsement signals Carl’s standing with the industrial employers along the Interstate 10 and Mobile Bay corridors, where shipbuilding, aerospace, chemicals and paper products employ thousands. The Gulf United Metro Business Organization, which organizes business leaders around the Mobile area’s metro priorities, has made infrastructure and economic development central issues — the same portfolio Carl pointed to during his time on the county commission and in Washington.
What the district looks like
Alabama’s 1st Congressional District sweeps across the state’s entire Gulf Coast and southeastern corner, taking in Mobile and Baldwin counties along with a broad stretch of rural south Alabama. It is a district where the politics of port development, military installations, fisheries, agriculture and coastal tourism all intersect, and where voters have consistently favored Republicans in federal races for decades. Representation in Washington is tied closely to a short list of regional priorities: the Port of Mobile and its expanding container terminal, the shipyard and aviation workforces, the coastal insurance and flood-policy questions that follow from living on the Gulf, and federal support for the roads and bridges that tie the region together.
That mix helps explain why the endorsement of a sitting sheriff resonates. Public safety has been a defining issue in Mobile County politics in recent years, and the Sheriff’s Office sits at the center of it, responsible for patrol and investigations across the county’s unincorporated areas and for operating the county jail. Burch, who spent decades with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office before winning the office himself, has made violent crime, detention operations and deputy staffing the public face of his tenure. His statement that Carl looks forward to continuing to support law enforcement in Mobile speaks directly to that constituency.
Carl, for his part, thanked Burch and reiterated that law enforcement support would remain a priority for him — a commitment that tracks with his record in Congress, where he backed legislation and funding measures aimed at first responders and border security, positions he has highlighted on the campaign trail as he courts the same voters.
How the campaign is being run
The endorsement video format reflects how campaigns in the district have reached voters this cycle. With a compressed special-election calendar and a primary in the dog days of August, campaigns have relied heavily on social media distribution, targeted digital advertising and earned media from local outlets rather than the long runway of yard signs and county fish fries that a regular cycle allows. A sheriff’s endorsement delivered on video can circulate for days among the exact primary voters — older, reliably Republican, engaged with public safety issues — that campaigns most want to reach.
For voters, the practical question between now and Aug. 11 is turnout. Special primaries historically draw a small fraction of the electorate, which magnifies the value of each campaign’s organized supporters. A sheriff who asks his network to vote can move real numbers in a low-turnout environment; the same is true of the church networks, business groups and veteran organizations that the other endorsements tap into. Campaigns have been urging early and absentee voting as well, and county probate offices across the district have processed absentee applications through the run-up to election day.
The winner of the Aug. 11 Republican primary will advance to the special general election as the heavy favorite in a district that has not sent a Democrat to Congress in generations. That reality concentrates the entire contest — and the entire significance of endorsements like this one — inside the Republican primary itself.
What comes next
In the final stretch before the vote, expect the endorsement trail to continue. Campaigns in winner-take-all specials typically roll out backers county by county, pairing each with a specific argument: the business groups vouch for economic stewardship, the statewide figures vouch for alignment with the party’s national leadership, and the law enforcement endorsers vouch for character and local roots. Carl’s campaign now holds cards in each of those categories, and Burch’s video makes the law-enforcement argument explicit.
For his part, Burch framed the choice in personal terms rather than policy terms — friendship, fifteen years of history, and a portrait of Carl as a businessman and public servant. That kind of endorsement is difficult for opponents to counter directly. It does not ask voters to compare position papers; it asks them to trust a familiar local figure’s judgment about another familiar local figure. In a compressed special election, where voters have had little time to study a large field, that trust can be decisive.
Polls in the special Republican primary open at 7 a.m. on Aug. 11 and close at 7 p.m., with voters casting ballots at their regular precincts across the district’s counties. Absentee deadlines fall in the days before the election under Alabama’s standard special-election rules, and campaigns are reminding supporters that with no runoff, there is no second chance: the nomination will be settled in a single night. When the count comes in, it will settle not just a candidacy but the question of who carries coastal Alabama’s interests back to Washington — and sheriff’s endorsements like this one may well help decide it.