HOMEWOOD, Alabama – The leader of Democrats in the Alabama Senate said tonight that racism has played a role in the rise and now undisputed dominance of the Republican Party across the political landscape of Alabama.

Specifically, Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, said the election and subsequent re-election of President Barack Obama triggered a backlash by white Alabamians that allowed the state's Republican Party to capture overwhelming control of the Alabama Legislature in 2010 in addition to defeating the last Democrat to hold a statewide office that same year, Lucy Baxley, then president of the Alabama Public Service Commission.

Speaking to about 50 members of the Over the Mountain Democrats at the Homewood Library, Figures said a constant anti-federal government, anti-Obama drum beat that began by Republicans once Obama won the White House in 2008, only intensified across the state going into the 2010 general election.

"It seems to me that once Obama was elected we started hearing the Republicans attack him on almost everything he tried to do, especially in health care," said Figures. "We started hearing Republicans in office and Republicans running for office attacking the federal government, charging the federal government had suddenly become intrusive in our lives, that it was overreaching into our places of business and into our homes. And with every charge they made they used Obama's name."

"I think it's racism. At its core I just do," said Figures as many heads in the room nodded in agreement. "I don't think that before Obama ran and won we heard state Republicans making so many statements about national issues that they would have little say over. We didn't hear that with (Jimmy) Carter or Bill Clinton. I think it's just basic racism and I'm not someone who uses the race card and I'm someone who had thought that we were beyond that kind of thing."

Figures, 56, is the first woman to lead either party in the state Senate. In 2008 she became the first woman and first black to win the Alabama Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate where she opposed Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions.

Sessions easily beat Figures in that race.

Figures has been rumored to possibly be mulling over a race for governor in 2014. A member of the audience asked her if she might run for governor.

"I've been asked to consider a run for governor or lieutenant governor," Figures said.

But Figures said that right now she is not a candidate for either office.

"When I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008, that was a race where the Lord had put that spirit in me," said Figures. "Right now, I do not feel that sprit in me."