By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times
Five candidates for Birmingham mayor were on stage Tuesday night at the Carver Theatre, and the three currently in elected offices spent most of the night sparring.
Incumbent Mayor Randall Woodfin was clearly the primary target of all four challengers — but he took the most fire from State Rep. Juandalynn Givan and Jefferson County Commissioner Lashunda Scales.
Hopefuls Frank Woodson, pastor and businessman and Brian K. Rice, engineer and developer, also leveled criticism at the mayor but not with the force of the two seasoned officeholders, who strongly criticized Woodfin’s leadership, arguing that the city is off course and desperate for change at the top. The unified front of Scales and Givan, reinforced by their decision to both wear white and shared sense of urgency, dominated the debate stage, setting the tone for a night of testy exchanges and sharp rebuttals.
The debate, held exactly two weeks before Birmingham’s August 26 municipal elections, was sponsored by WJLD 104.1 FM and moderated by a stern James Williams, a talk show host at the station, who kept both the candidates and audience in check. According to the station only the “leading contenders” were invited to the debate meaning four of the nine qualifiers — Kamau Afrika, Marilyn James-Johnson, Jerimy Littlepage and David Russell — were not on the stage.
Givan, first elected to her House District 60 seat in 2010, said the city had been plagued by a “ran-demic” (a play on the word “pandemic”) that has spread rapidly through the city and claimed the water works utility, which has been renamed Central Alabama Water now led by a GOP majority board; as well as the United Football League Birmingham Stallions, which is reportedly relocating, and hundreds of lives due to gun violence.
Scales, a former City Councilor, who was first elected to the County Commission in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, said Birmingham was “one of the worst run cities in the state of Alabama” and “… people are leaving the city by the thousands. We’ve lost over 16,000 people in seven and a half years,” she said.
But Woodfin, seeking a third term was prepared for the tag-team from the start of the 90-minute debate.
“There are some folks on this stage who don’t want you to think Birmingham is making progress,” he said in his opening statement. “So, tonight you will hear lies from my opponents, tonight you will hear a lot of pessimism from my opponents, tonight you will hear made up numbers from my opponents, tonight you will hear them saying ‘the city of Birmingham is going in the wrong direction.’”
Woodfin, first elected in 2017 and re-elected in 2021, pointed to his record: “Promises made, promise kept,” he said as the debate moved along. “I promised that I would make our city safer, and violent crime is now down more than half it was last year. I promised to tear down blight, and we have removed thousands of abandoned structures throughout our city. I promised to open doors for every student in this city, and we’ve paved the way for 2,000 students to attend colleges in our state tuition free.”
Woodson said homicides may have decreased, but overall crime was up. “That’s a fact,” he said. “People are not safer. Birmingham is not seen as a safe city. I walk through the neighborhoods, and our seniors are afraid to come to the door. They tell me ‘I’m in here with my .45. I’m in here with my dog. I only go out to one or two places.’”
Rice also issued his own critiques of the mayor, saying residents need someone advocating and fighting on their behalf. “We will always support the strong, but we must lift up underserved communities,” he said. “I will focus on safety for our seniors. I will remove any plans that add to concentration of poverty. I will make sure we do not keep sending money to Atlanta friends. I will make sure we focus on local businesses.”
Along with making opening and closing statements, the candidates responded to about half dozen questions on topics including the former Birmingham Water Works Board, increasing revenue to Black business owners and developers, neighborhood association funding, the Mayor-Council Act, and housing.
Many responses from the challengers were tied to Woodfin.
Speaking about a disparity study which examines whether minority- and women owned businesses face unequal opportunities in city contracting, Givan said the city doesn’t need one. “If you drive through Ensley, despair; North Birmingham, despair … Go down to Roosevelt City; go to Pratt City, go to Riley, go to Roebuck — anywhere in this city that’s not Forest Park, that’s not Highland Avenue, or that’s not Glen Iris. Despair is all over, the city of Birmingham has 99 neighborhoods, 23 communities, and not all of them matter except for Southtown, downtown, and Uptown. We don’t need a study, we need someone in City Hall who is going to fight for the people, someone who is going to visit the neighborhoods.”
Woodfin replied, “It’s hard to be lectured from a person who just moved into Birmingham the last eight months, or claimed they lived in Birmingham, who finally got an apartment. You’re a representative of certain parts of that same Western part of town that you were rolling off and have not done anything for that area. So do not lecture me.”
Givan also accused the mayor of not being “mature enough to handle the role and responsibilities that he took under that oath of office years ago” and “doing all other types of evil, lowdown, hateful things such as paying people to harass me publicly – verifiable by the Alabama Bureau of Investigations.”
Woodfin replied: “You’ve heard everything she just said. I told y’all yesterday people [are] running out of spite. If you can’t hear that spite and pettiness and vindictiveness in her voice … [She’s] a person who just ran for Congress in a district she didn’t live in, and now she’s running for mayor in a city she doesn’t live in.“
In 2024, Givan ran unsuccessfully for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district seat and has said she owns homes in Forestdale and Adamsville. She now has an apartment on the western edge of downtown, blocks from the Smithfield neighborhood.
During the Tuesday debate, Givan said she moved into the City of Birmingham last year, “for which the law says that you move in within 90 days of the election.”
As his opponents remained critical of the city’s direction, Woodfin said viewers heard the tale of two cities but told voters to be “bullish” on Birmingham. “Keep a mayor who is going to be positive about the forward trajectory we are taking this city,” he said. “What we have not mentioned, and is worth mentioning, is that for the first time in 30 years Birmingham City Schools saw an increase in its population. That means we are doing something right, that families are choosing to stay here and families want to be here to educate their children in our school system.”
Earlier in the day, Woodfin said he was at the opening of a new Southern Research biotechnology center in downtown Birmingham estimated to create 100 direct jobs and $80 million in economic growth in the next 3-5 years.
As the debate wound down, after more than an hour of skirmishing, Scales told Woodfin: “In all honesty, … I like you mayor. I just don’t like the way you do things. When it comes to business, I have no enemies. You have to learn how to work together to get beyond personalities. When I said we have already have a footprint, we do, and it’s already working. But you know the reason why Birmingham is in the shape it’s in? Because of the denial you see right now. You can’t fix what you don’t see as a problem.”
To view the full debate click here
Updated at 9:20 a.m. on 8/13/2025 with edits.
