Electoral Connection

Terri Sewell sponsored the Helping working families afford child care act. This is a form of position taking. She knows her district is poor and that affordable health care is a large concern of theirs. By sponsoring this bill she is telling her constituents that she is fighting for the same things they are and she holds the same values as them. She also cosponsored A bill to require the president to disclose certain information such as income, assets and liabilities. She was also position taking in this instance and trying to please her very left leaning constituency, many of which were very upset with the results of the election.
Sewell issued a press release that she hosted a tele-town hall with rural hospital administrators to get their feedback on the Affordable Health Care Act. As republicans try to repeal the act she wants to hear from her constituency to see what is working and what needs fixed within the act. She has taken aim at the rural community because the majority of the rural community is elderly and sick and Medicaid and Medicare will affect them the most. Since no action has been taken by Sewell she is just position taking at this point. She wants to show her constituents that she will listen to their feedback and work to do something about it in Washington. Her hope is to use this as a source of credit claiming and not just symbolism. This is an issue important to her poor and elderly constituents and they will feel the ramifications if she does not produce.
Sewell also demonstrated credit claiming when she issued a press release about how she re-introduced a bill that would allow small businesses to save a certain amount of money tax free. While this act may have a small impact on her constituency I think it was largely an effort to show her constituency that she can get stuff done in Washington.

When I looked up Terri Sewell's twitter the first thing that came up was a retweet about Alabama football. This was a way to advertise to constituency not only is she a member of congress but she is also just like the people she represents. She uses her twitter to advertise herself and to connect with her constituents on a different level. However, social media does not seem to be her most effective form of advertising. With only 1,300 followers it does not appear that she has reached out to very many people with twitter, but with her success and often unopposed elections she has not had to branch out and advertise to the younger people on social media. If in the future she finds herself in a more competitive race she may find social media to be more beneficial to her than it is now.She seems to spend more money and effort using her franking privilege to reach her constituents as opposed to social media. In 2015 she spent $22,018.27 on franking, and in 2016 she spent $16,789.23. Each year this was about three per cent of her total expenditures. It is interesting that she spent less money in 2016, an election year, than she did in 2015. I would assume she did not see the need to spend anymore money in 2016 once she realized she was running unopposed. She created enough name recognition in her advertising in the past that she did not need to spend anymore money.
When it comes to how much she travels from DC to her district she does not seem to spend as much compared to other members of congress. In 2015 she only 7.7% of her total spendings went to travel and in 2016 6.5%. I think this can be attributed to the fact that she is already a well known figure in her district and she finds she is contributing more to her district with her work in DC. Overall, I think Sewell, in her situation, finds more value in credit claiming than she does in advertising.

Sewell scares away her competition

Terri Sewell has won her district by a large margin of victory in the past three elections. She ran unopposed in the last two elections. She kicked ass in the last election and won with 98.4% of the vote. She won with the exact same per cent of the vote in the 2014 election. In 2012 Republican Don Chamberlain ran against her and she won with 75.8% of the vote. She also faced no opponent in the 2016 primary election. With her unopposed past success I think it is safe to say that Terri Sewell's seat will be hers for the taking in 2018. The reason for her success is because her district is largely African Americans that support the democratic party. Some of the major issues she campaigned on that made her so successful were education, healthcare, jobs and the economy. These issues are important to her constituents because her district is very poor and its unemployment rate is well over the national average. Sewell sees education as the long term solution to this problem and campaigned hard on it. She also knows that many of her constituents are poor and can not afford healthcare and wants to work to give them affordable options.

Despite her large margins of victory, I found it interesting that in 2014 Terri spent slightly more than the average House member on her campaign. As of January 2015 she has raised $4,456,130. She spent about $11 per general election vote she received. This is higher than the national average of $7 per general election vote. I found this very interesting and I think Sewell is working to get even more name recognition than she already has. I think the way she campaigns will continue to give her future success.

District Profile

                                      
                                                  Alabama's 7th Congressional District

The population of Alabama's seventh district is home to 667,721 people of which are about 64% African Americans, 33% Whites and just 3% Asian or Native American. The district lines were redrawn in an effort to better represent the minority population of Alabama.

One of the reasons Terri Sewell campaigns so hard on job creation is because the unemployment rate of her district is nearly twice the national average at 10.2. The median household income in Alabama's seventh district is $33,928. 42,146 people make less than $10,000 a year and 38,779 make only $15,000-24,999 a year. In addition, 34.7% of families with children under the age of 18 were below the poverty line, and 53.1% of families with single mothers were below the poverty line.

The three largest businesses/industries, in order, are educational services, health care, social assistance, manufacturing and retail trade. Educational services ranks so high because the district is home to the three largest universities in the state, University of Alabama, Alabama State University and University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age
Median age 36 years

Cities
The district encompasses portions of Birmingham, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa. The largest city completely within the district is Selma (where Sewell was raised.)

Urban v Rural
72.2% live in urban
27.8% rural

Presidential election
69.8% of the population voted for Hillary and 28.6% for Trump. This is election was very comparable to many other elections within the district. The district has been represented by a democrat all but six years since 1843.

Terri Sewell Profile

Terri Sewell Biography

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S001185 

https://sewell.house.gov/contact

         

               Age: 52, Born on January 1, 1965 in Huntsville, Alabama

               Terri Sewell attended high school in Selma, Alabama and furthered her education at Princeton University. She earned her master's degree from Oxford University and attended law school at Harvard. She received many honors from all the universities she attended and spent her college summers working on the hill for various Congressmen. Her mother largely influenced her to start her career in politics. Her mother was the first woman elected to Selma's City Council and led a politically active life. 

                Now Sewell lives in and represents Alabama's 7th district. She was once married but now divorced and has no children. She is a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was one of the first African American women from Alabama to be elected to Congress. Before she was elected to Congress she served as a law clerk in Birmingham and then became a partner in the firm. In the law office of Maynard, Cooper & Gale she became the only black public finance lawyer in Alabama. 

Tenure https://ballotpedia.org/Terri_Sewell

      Terri Sewell holds liberal views on most issues and will vote according to party lines about ninety percent of the time. She was elected to Congress in 2010 and since then has been a strong advocate for many of former President Obama's proposals. In addition, she is a strong supporter of honoring those who have lost their lives for honorable causes. Her first piece of successful legislation was the Congressional Gold Medal bill that were killed in the bombing of a church in 1964. She is also a strong advocate for job creation, workforce development and job training for her constituents. 

 Assignments 

        Sewell sits on the Ways and Means Committee and is well qualified with her fifteen years of experience as a public finance attorney. She is also a member of the Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence which deals with national security. She is a ranking member on the Subcommittee on the Department of Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture, an important subcommittee to the Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence.

Interest Group Ratings

https://votesmart.org/candidate/evaluations/121621/terri-sewell#.WJ0nBxIrKt8

        Sewell scores nearly a 100 percent approval rate with all Pro-Choice organizations. The UFCW also gives her a 100 percent rating for her anti-management and pro-labor voting record. Her 85 percent rating from the National Association of Police Organizations shows that she has a tough on crime attitude. The National Education Association also scored her at 100 percent, and many affirmative action and employment groups rated her extremely high. Her scores were low among nearly all conservative leaning groups.

Fun Facts 

   She was the first black valedictorian in her high school. After graduating from college she was on The Today Show because she was selected as one of the "Top Collegian Women."