On April 20, 2024, the House passed the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 311–112. Dale Strong voted no. You can see it on the House Clerk's roll call — H.R. 8035, roll call 151, Strong: Nay.
Two things make that vote worth a closer look.
The first: he voted for the bill to get a vote
Before a bill can be voted on, the House has to adopt a "rule" allowing it to the floor. Without the rule, the bill never comes up and never passes.
Strong voted for the rule that let Speaker Mike Johnson bring the Ukraine package to the floor. Then he voted against the package itself.
A Washington Post opinion column mapping where the aid money actually goes flagged exactly this, naming Strong as one of seven House Republicans who "voted against Ukraine aid going to their districts did vote for the rule that allowed Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) to bring the bill to the floor — without which aid could not have moved forward."
That's a member getting it both ways. The aid passes, the district keeps the work, and his public record still shows a no vote he can point to.
The second: the money was coming to Huntsville
The column's whole point is that most Ukraine military aid is spent in the United States, replenishing American stockpiles at American plants. It listed where in Alabama:
- Anniston — Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Hercules recovery vehicles
- Huntsville — Hydra 70 rockets
- Troy — HIMARS and Javelin missiles
Huntsville is Strong's district. He was one of 16 House members the column identified as voting against aid money that supports defense jobs where they live.
Why this matters more for him than for most members
Strong is not a backbencher on this subject. He sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where he is vice chair of the subcommittee funding NASA, the Justice Department, and the Commerce Department, and he chairs a Homeland Security subcommittee. His district contains Redstone Arsenal, one of the largest military installations in the country.
And the defense industry is, by a wide margin, his financial base. OpenSecrets' benchmarking of his PAC money shows he takes $239,500 from the defense sector against an average House member's $29,408 — more than eight times the norm, and about 40% of every PAC dollar he raises.
The names on the list are the ones you'd expect: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Leidos, L3Harris, Parsons, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Plus Huntsville's own contractors — Torch Technologies and Verity Integrated Systems, whose employees rank among his largest individual donors. Overall, 89% of his money comes from PACs, super PACs, and large donors, and about 1% from small grassroots donors.
So the man who takes eight times the average defense money, from an Appropriations seat, in a district built around a federal arsenal, cast the safe symbolic vote against the defense bill — after quietly making sure it could pass.
The rest of the ledger
That instinct — take the credit, dodge the blame — shows up in the rest of his record too.
He told a Huntsville audience in February 2025 that the DOGE cuts would work out for the city because Space Command and the Iron Dome were coming: "These jobs, while we may lose a couple, we will gain many of them in the end." Then 279 senior Marshall Space Flight Center employees went on the list to leave.
He voted for the budget bill that is projected to cost 22,103 people in his district their health coverage, according to the Joint Economic Committee's district-level analysis — while 28,867 households in AL-05, about 9% of the district, rely on SNAP for groceries.
And he has never held a public in-person town hall where a constituent could ask him to explain any of it. When his opponent invited him to four public forums in writing this July, his office didn't reply.
The bottom line
A vote for the rule and against the bill is a vote that only makes sense if you want the outcome and not the record.
Strong got the outcome. Huntsville built the rockets. And the roll call still says Nay.
Sources
House Clerk, Roll Call 151, 118th Congress, 2nd Session — April 20, 2024.
"These legislators opposed Ukraine aid and their own states' interests" — The Washington Post, April 25, 2024. Photo: U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons.
