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Jeff Sessions wants his old job back as Alabama U.S. Senator
Sessions files to run in GOP primary to reclaim the seat he gave up to become Donald Trump’s attorney general
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
MONTGOMERY (CFP) — In 2017, Jeff Sessions gave up the U.S. Senate seat he had held for 20 years to become President Donald Trump’s first attorney general.
Now, after parting with the president on unhappy terms, Sessions wants that job back — but he’ll have to fight through Trump and a field of Alabama Republicans to get it.
Sessions, 72, who represented Alabama in the Senate from 1997 until 2017, announced November 7 that he will file the paperwork to run for his old seat, which is currently held by Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones.
Jeff Sessions announces Senate run on Fox News
“It’s not ‘my seat’ in the Senate, but I believe I have something to give,” Sessions said during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show where he announced his Senate run. “I have some convictions that I think need to be pushed.”
“We need to get some of the Republicans moving. They haven’t been pushing hard enough to advance the Trump agenda,” he said.
Sessions also released a campaign ad which made it clear that he will try to run for the Senate as a pro-Trump candidate, despite his rocky tenure and messy split from the administration.
Watch Jeff Session’s campaign ad at the end of this story.
“When I left President Trump’s Cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No. Did I go on CNN and attack the president? Nope. Have I said a cross word about our president? Not one time,” Sessions said. “I’ll tell you why. First, that would be dishonorable. I was there to serve his agenda, not mine. Second, the president is doing a great job for America and Alabama, and he has my strong support.”
With Sessions in the race, the looming question is how loudly and often Trump might weigh in against a man he repeatedly dismissed as “weak” and disappointing before eventually firing him.
In the wake of Sessions’s interview with Carlson, Trump told reporters Friday that he has not decided whether to get involved in the race and that Sessions “said very nice things about me.” While not endorsing Sessions, he did not unload on him, either.
On Saturday, the president is visiting Tuscaloosa for the Alabama-LSU football game, putting the state’s Senate race top of mind, particularly for Sessions’s new primary rivals who may be vying for demonstrations of Trump’s favor.
Sessions’s last-minute decision to run — on the final day to file — shakes up a Republican primary race that had already attracted eight candidates, including U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne from Mobile, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, Secretary of State John Merrill, and Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court justice who lost the seat to Jones in 2017 amid allegations of sexual conduct with underage girls.
Perhaps most affected is Byrne, who gave up his House seat to run for the Senate and could now end up out of office if he can’t beat Sessions, a proven vote-getter who has won five statewide races.
Byrne made it clear that Sessions’s fractured relationship with Trump will be part of the upcoming race.
“Alabama deserves a Senator who will stand with the President and won’t run away and hide from the fight,” Byrne said on Twitter.
Tuberville made the same point, calling Sessions “a career politician” who “failed the President at his point of greatest need.”
“[President] Trump said it best when he called Jeff Sessions ‘a disaster’ as AG and an ’embarrassment to [Alabama],” Tuberville said on Twitter.
Trump forced Sessions out as attorney general in 2018 after criticizing him for months for recusing himself from overseeing the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president called Sessions “weak” and said he regretted elevating him to the post.
Sessions’s candidacy did draw a quick endorsement from Alabama’s senior U.S. Senator, Republican Richard Shelby, who said Sessions would be “formidable candidate.”
“Jeff Sessions is a friend. I worked with him every day up here for 20 years,” Shelby said “He’s a man of integrity. Of course, he’ll have to run his own race, and that’s up to the people of Alabama.”
Sessions’s return is the latest twist in a topsy turvy political saga set off by his resignation to join Trump’s Cabinet.
Then-Governor Robert Bentley appointed Republican Luther Strange to the vacant seat. But when Bentley resigned amid a sex scandal, his successor, Governor Kay Ivey, ordered a special election to fill the vacancy, and Moore defeated Strange for the Republican nomination, despite Trump’s vocal support of Strange.
After Moore’s campaign imploded in scandal, Jones won a narrow victory, become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in the Yellowhammer State in 25 years.
Trump weighed in on the race twice, first to try to help Strange beat Moore and then to try to help Moore beat Jones, neither of which worked.
If Jones loses, the new senator would be the fourth person in four years to hold the seat, in a state that previously had not had a Senate vacancy in 20 years.
Jones is considered to be the most endangered 2020 Senate Democrat, running in a state Trump carried by 28 points, but is likely to benefit from turmoil in the Republican primary.
Watch Jeff Session’s new campaign ad:
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Former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville running for U.S. Senate
Tuberville gives Trump a shout out in his announcement; Sean Spicer reportedly set to work in his campaign
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
BIRMINGHAM (CFP) — Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville has announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in football-happy Alabama in 2020.
U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville
“After more than a year of listening to Alabama’s citizens, I have heard your concerns and hopes for a better tomorrow,” he said in a brief statement posted on a new campaign website and on Twitter. “I am humbled to announce the next step — I will be a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.”
In his tweet, Tuberville used the hashtag #MAGA, President Donald Trump’s pledge to “Make America Great Again.”
Politico reported the Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, plans to work for Tuberville’s campaign.
Tuberville, 64, coached Auburn for nine seasons from 1999 to 2008, ending with an 85-40 record. He won an SEC championship in 2004, when his team went undefeated but wasn’t invited to play in the national championship game.
Among Tuberville’s biggest achievements at Auburn — beating in-state rival Alabama six straight times. Now, he’ll need to appeal to those same rabid Alabama fans to make his political dreams come true.
The man now sitting in the Senate seat, Democrat Doug Jones, is an Alabama graduate.
Tuberville will face U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, who went to law school at Alabama, in the Republican primary next year.
At least two other GOP candidates, State Auditor Jim Zeigler and State Senate Pro Tem Del Marsh, are also looking at the race.
Jones won the Senate seat in a special election in 2017 after the campaign of Republican Roy Moore imploded amid allegations of sexual contact with underage girls.
Given Alabama’s strong Republican tilt, Jones is considered to be the most vulnerable Democratic senator facing re-election in 2020.
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Republican U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne first to take on Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones in 2020
Byrne’s past criticism of President Donald Trump could become an issue in the GOP primary
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
Watch Byrne’s campaign kickoff. Video below story.
MOBILE (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne has become the first Republican to enter the 2020 U.S. Senate race in Alabama, drawing a contrast between what he called “bedrock” Alabama values and the priorities of Washington — and between his positions and those of the Democrat now holding the seat, Doug Jones.
“Look at Washington and tell me you don’t see a disconnect between your values and the values you see up there,” Byrne said at his campaign kickoff February 20 at an oyster house in Mobile. “Look at Washington and tell me you don’t see people that have a vision that’s fundamentally at odds with what America is.”
U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne kicks off Senate campaign in Mobile (From WKRG via YouTube)
Byrne drew a contrast with Jones over his opposition to Brent Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, his stand in favor of legal abortion, and his opposition to the president’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“When the people we charge with patrolling our Southern border, with protecting you and me, tell us we need to build some more border wall, we build a border wall,” Byrne said, to applause from his supporters.
Byrne also warned his supporters that “the people that presently hold this seat intend to keep it, and they will stop at nothing.”
Byrne, 64, from Baldwin County just across the bay from Mobile, was elected to Alabama’s 1st District U.S. House seat in a 2013 special election and has won re-election easily three times. He had previously served in the State Senate and as chancellor of the Alabama Community College System.
While Byrne offered full-throated support of Trump in his campaign kickoff, his previous comments about the president could come back to haunt him in a Republican primary in a state where the president remains popular.
During the 2016 campaign, after a video surfaced in which Trump was heard describing how he groped women’s genitals, Byrne withdrew his endorsement and called on Trump to exit the race, saying he could not defeat Hillary Clinton. However, he later made it clear that he did not support Clinton and would vote for the Republican ticket.
Byrne was joined by two of his House colleagues from Alabama, Martha Roby and Mo Brooks, in criticizing Trump during the campaign — and both of them discovered, as Byrne might, the political consequences of running afoul of the Trump faithful.
Brooks came in third place in the Republican primary in a 2017 special election to fill the Senate seat Jones now holds against two candidates who criticized him for his comments about Trump. Roby was forced into a primary runoff in 2018 for the same reason, although she survived.
Jones, 64, won a special election to the Senate in 2017 after the Republican nominee, Roy Moore, was accused of pursuing sexual relationships with underage girls, allegations which Moore denied. Jones is considered among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats on the ballot in 2020, in a state Trump carried in 2016 by 28 points.
During his time in the Senate, Jones has not tried to tack to the right to appeal to Alabama’s conservative electorate. He has supported the Democratic leadership on key votes, which included voting against the Republican tax cut plan and the Kavanaugh nomination, and he also supports same-sex marriage and providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants.
Jones ended 2018 with $2.1 million in cash on hand for the 2020 race, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Given Jones perceived vulnerability, the race is expected to draw an number of Republican challengers into the primary with Byrne. State Auditor Jim Zeigler has formed an exploratory committee, and others considering the race are U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer from Hoover and State Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh from Anniston.
The Senate race in Alabama is one of 13 Southern Senate races in 2020. Only two of those seats are held by Democrats, Jones and Virginia’s Mark Warner.
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Watch Byrne’s campaign kickoff:
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