ATTALLA, AL – State Senate candidate Jesse Battles announced today that the Alabama Secretary of State has officially certified his place on the ballot for the November 3, 2026 General Election for Alabama State Senate District 10.
The confirmation ends weeks of anxious waiting and caps months of grassroots organizing across Etowah, Cherokee, and DeKalb counties. To earn the spot, the Battles campaign gathered and submitted well over 3,000 signatures from registered voters across the district - voters who, the campaign says, were adamant about deciding for themselves who their next State Senator will be, rather than leaving that decision to the Establishment.
"Today belongs to the people of this district," said Battles. "Earlier this year, the Establishment tried to take this decision out of your hands by striking my name from the ballot. Over the past several weeks, more than 3,000 of you put it right back where it belongs. That's how this is supposed to work - the people choose their leaders, not the insiders."
Make no mistake: Jesse Battles is, and always has been, a Republican. For more than a decade, he has poured his time and energy into the conservative cause - building one of Alabama's most active College Republican chapters at Jacksonville State University, helping the Secretary of State's office enforce Alabama's voter ID law, working to get publicans elected up and down the ballot, and serving faithfully in his county Republican Party. None of that has changed. The only reason his name will appear outside the Republican column this November is that the Establishment stripped him from the primary ballot and took that choice away from the voters. Jesse Battles has never been, nor will he ever be, anything other than a Republican.
The signatures represent more than a legal threshold to the campaign. Each one, organizers say, came from a face-to-face conversation - at a feed store, a ballgame, a church parking lot, a front porch - with neighbors who wanted their voice heard in November.
"We're hitting the campaign trail harder than ever, and everywhere we go we hear the same thing - more neglect, more disregard from Montgomery for the people who actually live and work in Northeast Alabama," Battles said. "This campaign has been 110% about people from the very first day. On November 3, we intend to hand a victory back to the people who built it."
With ballot access secured, the campaign says it will expand its operation across the district through the summer and fall, with a focus on infrastructure long promised and never delivered, support for local businesses and family farms, backing for veterans and law enforcement, and a seat at the table for the communities Battles says Montgomery has overlooked.
The campaign also says it will share simple, step-by-step voting guidance with District 10 voters in the weeks ahead, so every supporter knows exactly how to cast their vote for Battles in November.
About Jesse Battles
Jesse Battles is a seventh-generation son of Northeast Alabama, a small business owner, and a family farmer from Attalla. A lifelong Republican, he rebuilt the College Republicans at Jacksonville State University into one of the most active chapters in the state, worked for the Alabama Secretary of State helping enforce the state's voter ID law, and has served as president of the Gadsden Rotary Club and as a member of the Gadsden-Etowah Industrial Development Authority. He and his wife, Melissa, welcomed their daughter, Olenna, in January. Battles originally qualified for the Republican primary in State Senate District 10 but was removed from that ballot in February; he is now ning as an Independent so the voters of District 10 - not the Establishment - can decide who represents them.
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