James Linderholm: State House · District 20 | Madison County Values Check

On the record

Wants politicians, not judges, deciding who walks free
On his campaign website, called the new $1.25 billion Elmore County prison “obscene” and “immoral,” and wrote that inmates who would have finished their sentences under current guidelines, along with non-violent offenders, “should be released if they are not a danger to the community.” Those sentences were handed down by judges who heard the evidence. His plan is to have politicians in Montgomery override them and open the doors early.¹
Hiding his positions from voters
Weeks before the election, rebuilt his campaign website. The public-safety and economy pages, including his prison stance and his call for a minimum wage above $7.25, disappeared. The site now lists only education, health care and infrastructure. The positions didn't change. Voters' ability to see them did.²³
Preaches nonpartisanship, takes the partisan PAC's endorsement
Linderholm has campaigned against partisanship, telling voters they're tired of “mudslinging about who is more MAGA.” His endorsements tell a different story: Persist Alabama, a PAC whose stated “mission” is “turning Alabama blue,” and the Alabama AFL-CIO, whose national parent unanimously endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. Nothing says “above party politics” like a PAC built to win party politics.⁴⁵⁶⁷

Fact check

The “siphoning” myth

What they say

“The Choose Act is siphoning off up to $250 million from public schools.” His plan: “Let's take that voucher money.”⁸

The record

Not even close. CHOOSE Act accounts this year total about $174 million, under 2% of an education budget Gov. Ivey called “the largest ever in our state's history,” which also gives teachers a 2% raise. Public schools aren't being drained. They're getting record funding.⁹¹⁰

Prisons

What they say

Calls the new Elmore prison “unnecessary.”¹

The record

The U.S. Justice Department sued Alabama in 2020 over violence and unsafe conditions in its aging men's prisons. Every one of those prisons opened between 1928 and 1997, years when his own party controlled the Alabama Legislature; Democrats held it until 2010. Republicans are replacing the prisons Democrats left behind. His alternative is opening the doors.^1112131415

Medicaid

What they say

Criticized the Legislature's decision not to expand Medicaid.⁴

The record

Taxpayers would pick up the tab. Medicaid is already the single biggest line in Alabama's General Fund: about $1.18 billion of a $3.7 billion budget. Expansion would add a new adult population on top of that, with the state paying roughly $225 million a year by PARCA's estimate, every year. Expansion supporters say savings elsewhere would cover it. That is a bet Alabama taxpayers would be placing with their money.¹⁶¹⁷

Follow the money

Funded through ActBlue
James Linderholm raises campaign money through ActBlue, the Democratic Party's fundraising platform. ActBlue is under investigation by three U.S. House committees, whose chairmen said in April 2026 that it “deliberately obstructed” their probe into whether illicit and foreign donations got through its system. In 2025 the President also ordered a Justice Department investigation. ActBlue denies wrongdoing.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰

James Linderholm

On the record

Wants politicians, not judges, deciding who walks free

Hiding his positions from voters

Preaches nonpartisanship, takes the partisan PAC's endorsement

Fact check

The “siphoning” myth

Prisons

Medicaid

Follow the money

Funded through ActBlue

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Sources