Alabama Governor- Race of the Day

 100 Days Until Election Day

 

Alabama Governor

 

Status: Republican Open

2024 Presidential Result: Red State (South)

 

Outlook: Likely Republican

 

In this midterm election year, Democrats have high hopes of making substantial gains in all sorts of races. In Alabama, the party has nominated their strongest possible contender and he will face a Republican who is in many regards a weak candidate. However, it likely will not matter a whole lot in these polarized time where some states are just close to unwinnable for one party or the other.

 

Republican Governor Kay Ivey has served for close to ten years total now and has won two terms of her own as the sitting Governor, capping off a long political career. She successfully battled lung cancer while Governor and now, as she is close to turning 82 is term-limited. A noted social conservative, Ivey has seemed to have a relatively low key tenure in her final term.

 

With the Governorship becoming open, many prominent Republicans were said to be interested, but it was also the case that all credible candidates were prepared to defer to Tommy Tuberville, a freshman U.S. Senator who would likely run with the "full and total support" of Donald Trump. Indeed that is what happened, as Tuberville let speculation mount for months as to whether he would run for Governor or seek a second term in the Senate. Said to not be well-liked among Senate colleagues in either party, he launched a campaign for Governor and took 85 percent in the May primary against two little known opponents.

 

The entire political identity of Tuberville as been of "Coach" and he entered politics with the backing of Trump who seems to have quite an affinity for people who were involved in football. A native of Arkansas, Tuberville never played professionally, but had a long career as a college football coach. In the early '90's he was an assistant coach at Miami, where one of his players was Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Eventually, he came to the Yellowhammer State to become the head coach of the Auburn Tigers and he achieved great success in that post, including against the rival Alabama Crimson Tide. Then, as is often the case in sports, Tuberville's Auburn teams began to lose more and he would up resigning. He had mixed success at a couple other coaching stops and then entered broadcasting and the financial world, where his business associations brought about a lot of controversy including a partner being sent to prison.

 

In 2020, Tuberville was living in Florida, but decided to run for office in the state where he had coached Auburn. With Trump's support, and despite not being involved in campaign debates or going into much issue detail, he finished first in a Republican primary and then easily won a runoff against former Senator Jeff Sessions, a one time Trump ally, who the President soured on during his term as his own Attorney General. Sessions who had been fired as AG, attempted a comeback to the Senate, where he had easily won before, but lost the runoff to the White House backed Tuberville 61-39.

 

At this point, the general election in Alabama was considered a merely formality and in November, Tuberville took 60 percent of the vote against incumbent Democrat Doug Jones returning the seat in deep red Alabama to the Republican Party. 

The circumstance of the seat being held by a Democrat was of course unusual itself. Jones had won a "perfect storm" special election to the Senate in 2017 to take the seat that had recently been held by Sessions. A one time Congressional staffer, who had lost his only bid for office in 1994 when he unsuccessfully ran for his party's nomination for a State House seat, Jones made a name for himself as a U.S. Attorney in Alabama  where he successfully prosecuted Klansmen who who murdered four African-American young girls decades earlier in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. Back in the private sector, Jones launched a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2002, but that campaign did not go anywhere and he dropped out.

 

Turmoil engulfed Alabama politics in 2017, and Jones who easily won a Senate primary that year was in the right position to capitalize. The appointed interim Republican U.S. Senator lost a primary runoff to the controversial Roy Moore, a former State Supreme Court Chief Justice  who had twice been removed from office due to judicial misconduct. Considered an ultra-conservative, Moore faced headlines in the Senate campaign about his past involvement with teenage girls. He denied any criminal wrongdoing but the bad press was overwhelming and while Donald Trump stood by Moore, many in the party decided they could not vote for their party's nominee and to the surprise of many, Jones, a white candidate who had strong support among the state's African-American voters, won a U.S. Senate seat 50-48.

 

On Capitol Hill, Jones was considered one of the Senate's more moderate Democrats but everyone knew he would have a tough road to win a full term in 2000. This time, Moore finished a distant fourth in the Republican primary, and the nomination went to Tuberville. Despite questions regarding the Coach's residency and intellect, he did not possess the baggage that Moore had and there was not much Jones could do to hold on to his seat. Many praised him for even bothering him to run at all in 2020 and some thought he would be an ideal pick to become newly elected President Joe Biden's Attorney General, but that went to someone else (in a decision that Biden is said to deeply regret.)

 

On Capitol Hill, Tuberville has been an unapologetic ally of Trump and has often made headlines by his harsh rhetoric towards transgender people and Muslims as well opposition to such things as aid to Ukraine For a while, the Senator held up all military promotions in dealing with an abortion policy issue involving the Pentagon. Even his Pro-Life Republican colleagues were said to be upset by the tactic. In a television interview, Tuberville seemed to defend the concept of white nationalism as benign, while saying he was opposed to racism. It appeared Tuberville did not quite grasp the concept of what white nationalism is and he had by that point, the one-time jock, had developed a reputation of being perhaps the least intelligent member of the Senate.

 

In spite of a slew of bad headlines regarding his time in the private sector and as a Senator, Tuberville seemed likely to win another term in the Senate or a race for Governor in 2026. At first he denied he had made up his mind, but it was clear that he was looking to leave the Senate and return to try to govern a state in which he has actually lived in for a fairly short time in his life. The eligibility standard is tougher in Alabama for Governor than it is for Senate and even after he won the nomination, there was a real question over whether Tuberville had remained a resident of Florida and might be ruled ineligible to run for Governor. Such a ruling would have thrown this year's election into chaos but in what can hardly be considered a surprise, the State Republican Party ruled that their already decided Gubernatorial nominee, and sitting U.S. Senator was eligible to run. While challenges are pending before the State Supreme Court, it is considered that anything might now happen to prevent Tuberville from being on the ballot and in effect being elected Governor.

 

Both nominees for Alabama Governor this year are over 70 and have faced each other before. For years, there was speculation that Jones would run again in 2026 against Tuberville again for either Senate or Governor or that he might seek the new open Senate seat. Jones decided he wanted to run for Governor against Tuberville and in May took 79 percent of the primary vote against several African-American opponents, including the 2022 nominee for Governor. Black voters, as is in the case these days in many southern states, play a dominant role along Alabama Democrats. The white Jones though has retained his popularity with that community and is seen as easily being the most electable possible candidate.

 

This year, there is much anti-Trump sentiment among Democrats in all states and black voters in Alabama are expected to be particularly fired up about recent developments that are expected to eliminate a U.S. House seat won in 2024 by a black Democrat. Like their contest six years ago, Tuberville is not expected to do much in the way of debating Jones or delving into policy matters beyond basic boilerplate MAGA talking points. 

 

All things considered, this should be a race to keep an eye on and personally, I wish it were the case. A "blue tsunami" might make this become competitive at the end, but it would basically take that. Tuberville beat Jones, when he was an incumbent. by 20 points in the Senate election.  I do think this year's open Gubernatorial race might finish a few points closer but until there is any polling data suggesting an actual race, the  political reality is that Alabama is extremely adverse to Democrats, even ones that might be considered quite moderate by the party's own base, and all that Doug Jones can really do here is to gamely take another for his blue team against "Coach" Tuberville, his flaws and all.

 

Gubernatorial races predicted thus far:

 

0 D, 1 R (I Likely)

 

Totals predicted thus far:

 

6 D (6 holdover), 9 R (8 holdover, 1 Likely)