State Senate candidate Jesse Battles announced Monday 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 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.”
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 or 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 percent 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, 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.
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 running as an Independent.
