Senator Vivian Figures Contact information

Vivian Davis Figures was born on January 24, 1957. She is an American politician who is a Democratic member of the Alabama Senate, representing the 33rd District in Mobile County. She was elected on January 28, 1997, to serve the remaining term of her late husband, Senator Michael Figures, who was the President pro tempore of the Alabama Senate.

Figures graduated from Williamson High School in Mobile, Alabama, and earned a Bachelor of Science in management science from the University of New Haven in Connecticut. She put herself through college by working at Yale University and in a family-owned grocery. She was attending the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama, when her husband’s death forced her to discontinue her legal education.

Figures is President/CEO of Figures Legacy Education Foundation and serves on the board of directors of the Mobile Area Education Foundation. She is a past at-large member of the Democratic National Committee. She was initiated into the Delta Theta Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 2002.

Figures was elected to the Mobile City Council in 1993. In that capacity, she was known as a staunch community advocate. Early in her council career, she led the opposition to a proposed facility for burning petroleum-contaminated oil near downtown Mobile. As a council member, Figures was also the initial proponent of naming Mobile’s new minor league baseball park for home run legend Hank Aaron, a Mobile native.

Following her husband’s death in 1996, Figures ran for his seat in the Alabama Senate. She earned the most votes in the first round of the Democratic Party’s primary election, with 47 percent, but missed the majority needed to avoid a runoff election. She defeated James Buskey in the runoff, before defeating Republican Gregory Ramos to win election to the state senate, and was sworn into office in January 1997.

In the Alabama Senate, Figures serves as the chairwoman of the Education and Mobile County Local Legislation Committees. In the legislature, Figures may be best known as the perennial sponsor of a bill to ban smoking in indoor, public places statewide in Alabama. In the 2008 general session, the bill passed the Senate, was believed to have sufficient support to pass the House, and Governor Bob Riley had indicated he would sign it. The bill died when legislative filibusters prevented a final vote in the House.