An Alabama mayor is asking Lt. Gov. Will Ainworth to visit his city and sit down over a breakfast of “homemade biscuits and jam and Conecuh sausage” and discuss his transportation vision for the state.

The invitation comes from longtime Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day, who emailed AL.com on Tuesday and said he would like the state’s No. 2 elected official – and a top 2026 prospect for governor – to meet with rural mayors and other public officials from 10-12 counties in West Alabama to discuss transportation priorities.

Ainsworth has not responded to the request Day said he sent to his office.

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Day’s invitation comes after Ainsworth, for the second time in three months, made a public call for state transportation priorities to shift from a planned project to expand U.S. 43 in West Alabama toward adding additional lanes to Interstate 65.

“We have all heard (Ainsworth’s) loud cry for I-65,” Day said. “Before he (runs for governor), I would like to personally invite him to come down to rural West Alabama and layout his vision for how he plans to prioritize the rest of us.”

Ainsworth, in a tweet on Saturday, also called for a change in leadership at the Alabama Department of Transportation. The agency has long been led by Director John Cooper.

“I supported Will for lieutenant governor, and I think he might make a good governor someday,” said Day, whose small Clarke County city has U.S. 43 run directly through it. Day has been the city’s mayor since 1996.

He added, “However, I would hope he has a plan that includes all of us. All areas of the state … rich, poor, young, old, rural and urban. We would like to be part of his transportation vision for Alabama and will look for ways to support him if we are.”

Day said he will take the initiative and put together the meeting if Ainsworth is willing to attend. He said the invite list would include mayors and key leaders in Tuscaloosa and Mobile, whose cities could be affected by the U.S. 43 project.

And the meeting, Day suggested, should be over breakfast. He said he his “dearest friends” are “excellent cooks” and would furnish homemade biscuits, jam, Conecuh sausage and “all the trimmings” if the lieutenant governor “will just take a half a morning to sit down with us.”

Day is not the only West Alabama official who would like to see Ainsworth visit the region and talk transportation policy.

State Rep. A.J. McCampbell, D-Demopolis, said he hopes lieutenant governor visits the area and realizes the economic importance of expanding U.S. 43. Project supporters say an expanded U.S. 43 could be beneficial to the Alabama State Port Authority and the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa.

“In terms of opening up this side of the state, we need a good north-south corridor and right now, we don’t have one,” McCampbell said. “We have nothing but a two-lane highway.”

U.S. 43 is a four-lane highway from Mobile County to Thomasville, but it turns into two lanes for approximately 100 miles north to Tuscaloosa.

Much of that highway rolls through rural areas and small towns and through Alabama’s Black Belt region, which are some of the poorest counties in the state.

The Ivey administration prioritized a widening project for U.S. 43 during her 2021 State of the State address. The project is now under construction and is overseen by ALDOT as a design-build project.

A bypass around Linden is currently under construction, and officials hope the entire corridor project can be completed within five years, or that it wraps up shortly after Ivey’s tenure in office concludes in January 2027. She is term limited from running again.

The overall project, once completed, will provide a four-lane corridor that links Mobile to Tuscaloosa and toward Muscle Shoals.

Day, in May, said that Ivey is the only Alabama governor since the late 1950s to commit toward building a new north-south corridor through West Alabama.

Ainsworth is raising questions into why Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s administration is focusing on creating a north-south corridor through an less-traveled area of Alabama than I-65.

“Literally every Alabamian uses I-65 at some point, so let’s begin fixing the problems with our most heavily trafficked roadway before starting an entirely new project like the West Alabama Cooridor,” Ainsworth said, blasting the project for being too expensive to justify for too few motorists.

Ivey, in May, said Ainsworth was seeking “easy headlines,” and defended her Rebuild Alabama Act plan for financing improvements to I-65.

Rebuild Alabama was the state’s major road plan created after the Alabama Legislature voted in a gradual 10-cent per-gallon increase in the state’s fuel tax in 2019.

Ainsworth is pushing for six lanes of I-65 for 366 miles – from the Alabama-Tennessee state line south to Mobile. Alabama lawmakers, through a resolution in the spring, urged ALDOT to study and prioritize improvements to the interstate. The eventual goal, according to the Senate resolution, is to have the appropriate number of lanes in each direction of all sections of the interstate.

Day, in his comment to AL.com, said he is wondering if Ainsworth’s is placing “all his transportation eggs” in the I-65 basket “at the expense of all other projects and priorities in the state.”

“Is he willing to at least come listen to us poor rural folks before he allows the ‘big boys’ to break back in line ahead of us … once again?” Day said.