President Donald Trump’s pick for Alabama Senate, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, trounced former Attorney General and longtime Senator Jeff Sessions in a devastating primary Tuesday night, and will now go on to face Democrat Doug Jones in November – and Democrats are already taking vicious aim.
Trump had a rather productive Tuesday night, with several key wins, per Politico. In addition to Tuberville’s victory over Sessions, “Trump’s former White House physician, Ronny Jackson, won in Texas and is all-but-certain to come to Congress in January,” the outlet reported.
The president took a very active role in the Alabama race, likely as a way of exacting retribution on Sessions, who recused himself from the Department of Justice investigation into whether the Trump campaign had impermissibly coordinated with Russian officials to undermine the 2016 presidential election.
“[Trump] tweeted about it repeatedly over the course of the 18 weeks between the endorsement and the runoff, calling Sessions a ‘disaster’ in the days before the vote,” Politico noted. “He met with Tuberville last month on a visit to Texas and held a runoff-eve conference call with the coach and his supporters.”
Tuberville’s victory was decisive, according to AL.com; Sessions won just three of Alabama’s 67 counties.
“Slightly more than 17% of Alabama’s registered voters cast a ballot in Tuesday’s primary runoff, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office,” the state-based outlet noted. “Unofficial results show 626,551 ballots were cast out of 3,608,572 registered voters for a turnout of 17.36%. The greatest number of votes – 549,721 – were cast in the race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. Winner Tommy Tuberville received 333,890 votes, or 61%, to Jeff Sessions’ 215,831 votes, or 39.26%.”
Before the results were even finalized, though, Democrats were taking aim at Tuberville, launching a series of attacks on the former football coach, largely over rumors of malfeasance during Tuberville’s career at Auburn and his time as an SEC coach at Ole Miss.
“Sen. Jones got justice for four little girls murdered during church by the Klan. Tommy Tuberville thought a one-game suspension was enough when one of his players raped a little girl. Which one cares more about your daughter’s future?” the Alabama Democrats tweeted, citing an opinion piece from the Washington Examiner.
“Tommy Tuberville said he’d leave Ole Miss ‘in a pine box,'” the account railed. “Days later, he left for Auburn. Never told his players goodbye. At Auburn, he had a wandering eye every year. At Texas Tech, he ditched a recruit during dinner to leave for Cincinnati. Wonder who he’s lying to now?”
Tuberville is a longshot to defeat Jones. Although Sessions was clearly not the favorite to win the Republican primary, he was generally considered to be a more reliable candidate in the general, up against Jones, the incumbent Democrat who defeated former judge Roy Moore in a special election to fill Sessions’ seat when Sessions went to serve in the DOJ.