The committee also sets election rules for the statewide Republican primary and has oversight responsibilities for the 67 county parties.

The Republicans held their first statewide convention on June 4, 1867, and John Keffer, a Freedmen's Bureau agent, was made the first party's first chair.

The convention adopted what was considered a liberal platform for the time including "equal rights for all men without distinction of color."

That same year saw Republican Andrew Applegate elected as the first-ever lieutenant governor of Alabama under the state's newly adopted constitution of 1867.

That first post Civil War legislature under the new constitution was elected in February, 1868, with a 100-member House of Representatives (two-year terms) composed of 97 Republicans and 3 Democrats.

[7] That Republican-controlled legislature passed a resolution on November 24, 1869, approving the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing black men the right to vote in Alabama.

That document began the process of restricting black voter participation and expanding all forms of Jim Crow laws.

Further orchestrated efforts at voter intimidation, lynchings, vote fraud, and the inability of differing Republican factions to work together all doomed the party to long-term failure.

The first Republican Senators from Alabama were Willard Warner (1868–1871) and George E. Spencer (1868–1879)[13] who were both elected by the legislature before adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

B. Sloan was elected as a Republican to the State Senate from a district made up of Blount, Cullman, and Winston Counties.

Following the end of the populist era, Republicans effectively competed in just a few isolated hill counties, mostly in north Alabama.

During this prolonged period the Alabama GOP atrophied as a political party and became heavily dependent on federal patronage for its existence.

The most important and prominent of these Republican appointees would occur when President Eisenhower appointed Winston County's Frank M. Johnson[14] to a Federal District Judgeship.

Ironically, Johnson's frequent pro civil rights rulings from the bench would make him a hero to liberal Democrats and widely disliked in his own party.

[16] That year Grenier with the support of the Alabama Young Republicans forced long-time Chairman Claude O. Vardaman into retirement without a contest.

Grenier, along with a new generation of political activists played leading roles in re-organizing the party and moving beyond the "Post Office Republican" era.

Senator Lister Hill with the candidacy of James D. Martin[17] in a controversial race that Republicans have always maintained was "stolen" in the dead of the night.

Two years later most of those same candidates for Congress would run again in 1964, resulting in a Republican sweep of five of Alabama's eight congressional seats with victories by Jack Edwards, Glenn Andrews, James D. Martin, John Buchanan and Bill Dickinson.

In 1980, Jeremiah Denton became the first popularly elected Republican U. S. Senator in Alabama history after first winning that new statewide primary.

Hunt's election is widely viewed as effectively making Alabama a two-party state even though Republicans only made very modest legislative gains that year.

The victory in the governor's race in 1986 was the first Republican win in a statewide constitutional office since Reconstruction, ending 114 years of Democratic control.

On December 12, 2017, Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Nominee Roy Moore in a special election, and took office on January 3, 2018.

The secretary of the Alabama Republican Party also elected on February 27, 2021, is Carol Jahns of Prattville Autauga County.

The longest-serving chairman in state party history was Claude O. Vardaman of Birmingham, who held the post for twenty years from 1942 to 1962.

Yet as recently as 1977, there were no Republicans in either chamber of the Alabama Legislature until a lone seat in Mobile County was won that year in a special election.

Senator, Jeff Sessions was unopposed for a fourth term, the first time in state history that Democrats failed to produce a nominee.

The GOP Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, handily carried the state in 2016 taking 62.1% of the vote over Hillary Clinton.

In the November 6, 2018, general election, Republicans swept to an easy victory in every statewide contest with Governor Kay Ivey winning a full term with over 59% of the vote.

President Trump carried Alabama with 62.15% of the vote, making it the 11th straight Republican presidential victory in the state.

Governor Kay Ivey won a second full term winning 66.93% of the vote over the Democratic nominee and a Libertarian candidate.