About
Jerry Carl (R-Ala.) was first sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives on January 3, 2021, representing Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. He easily won reelection in 2022 with Trump’s “complete and total endorsement,” winning 82% of the vote in a very Republican state that backed the former president in both 2016 and 2020.
Before running for Congress, Carl served two terms on the Mobile County Commission (2012–20) and was also a businessman, founding and managing numerous companies in the medical equipment and real estate sectors.
In 2016, when he was president of the Mobile County Commission, Carl called transgender women “street freaks” during a discussion on transgender bathroom use. “Do you really want your wives and daughters using the same restroom with every street freak that wants to wander in and look around!” he wrote in a Facebook post.
During his first term in Washington, Carl showed his loyalty to Trump by downplaying the danger of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and casting doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. He objected to certifying the Electoral College results and voted against both impeaching Trump for inciting the mob and establishing a special House committee to investigate the insurrection, among other measures..
January 6, 2021
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Carl joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election.
- After voting against impeaching Trump for his role in instigating the attack and fanning the flames once the riot broke out, Carl explained that he “voted no because the reasons cited in these articles failed to reach the necessary threshold for impeachment. Furthermore, the President has publicly conceded the election and committed to a peaceful transition of power.”
- Carl voted against establishing a special House committee to investigate what led to the violent interruption of the congressional proceedings underway that day.
- In July 2021, Carl admitted that the attack on the Capitol was “a horrible event,” but went on to justify it by saying, “You had a handful of bad people who tore things up. You had a lot of people, and I don’t know what the count was, but they were there to support their president, which was Trump.”
- On July 27, 2021, in echoing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Trump himself, Carl announced that he would “boycott” the “sham process” of the House Select Committee until Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “seats all five Republican nominees.” He added that “Congress should not waste taxpayer dollars on a partisan witch hunt that will serve no purpose other than demonizing an entire political party and weaponizing the events of January 6.”
The Big Lie
- In a local television interview on Nov. 16, 2020—after his own electoral victory for his first term—Carl said that his priorities in Congress would include election reform. “One of the things I really want to address when I get up there is coming up with a standardization of some type on these federal elections that all states can actually follow. You can’t have states just changing the rules as they move along….”
- On Dec. 15, 2020, Carl signed a letter with 25 other House members-elect calling on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to investigate irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.
- On Jan. 7, 2021, Carl tweeted about why he had voted against certifying the Electoral College results, citing “overwhelming evidence of voter fraud and irregularities” in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
- In an interview with a Mobile, Alabama-based radio station, Carl offered a further explanation of his vote against certification, stating that “it’s not an anger vote. I need to have some answers. The people of my district have to have answers.”