Retired college football coach Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama’s high-stakes Senate race.
Jones was considered to be the most vulnerable Democratic senator heading into the general election, and the seat was the GOP’s best shot at picking up a win as Republicans fought to keep their 53-47 Senate majority.
Jones narrowly won a 2017 special election and had been seeking a full term in the deep-red southern state.
On Monday, Jones accused Tuberville of being a “quitter” and a “coward” during a stop in Mobile. He also downplayed recent polling that showed him trailing the former Auburn University football coach.
Tuberville, a white-haired social conservative, ran a mostly under-the-radar campaign. The political novice had been criticized for dodging debates and questions from the media and largely relied on President Trump’s endorsement to pull him across the finish line.
Tuberville has been linked to three people who were convicted of fraud in what has been described as Ponzi schemes, according to the New York Times. In two of those cases, Tuberville lost a lot of money. In the third, his wife bought a house through a company created by a person who was later accused and convicted of running a real estate-related Ponzi scheme. Tuberville’s charity for veterans had also been under scrutiny for questionable spending practices, something that his campaign denied and his opponent seized upon.
Jones, a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting the Klansmen who bombed a Birmingham church in 1963, became the first Alabama Democrat elected to the Senate in a quarter of a century. Jones won the seat in a 2017 surprise victory against Roy Moore. Moore’s conservative positions alienated him from women, racial minorities, and gays. He had also been accused of sexual misconduct with teenagers.
In the final days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, the candidates traded jabs.
Jones blasted Tuberville at a stop in Birmingham on Saturday, calling the former Auburn University coach “Donald Trump’s water boy” and referred to him as “Coach Clueless.”
“He just is simply talking. … People keep calling him ‘coach,'” Jones said. “He’s just a water boy for Donald Trump. That’s it. You want to use a sports analogy? He’s just Donald Trump’s water boy.”
Jones also slammed Tuberville for parroting Trump’s platform and attacked Tuberville’s mental acuity, saying he lacked knowledge of the problems facing Alabamians, such as the high coronavirus rates and racial and wealth inequalities.
In campaign stops, Jones emphasized his bipartisan record and called the Senate race against Tuberville “a slugfest.”
“It’s an uphill battle,” he said. “We’re battling tribalism.”
At Tuberville’s last campaign stop in Gardendale on Sunday, the Senate hopeful ended with the same sentiment he began his campaign with: an allegiance to Trump.
“God sent us and elected Donald Trump,” he said.
Tuberville has also taken Jones to task for supporting New York’s and California’s “liberal ideas” and “out-of-town socialists.”
With Trump’s help, Tuberville successfully took down career politician Jeff Sessions in a Republican runoff in July.
The former U.S. attorney general fell out of favor with Trump after he recused himself from the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
Trump took the recusal personally and spent several months using Sessions as a political punching bag.
“I made a mistake when I put him in as the attorney general,” Trump told Tuberville supporters in a conference call on the eve of the runoff. “He had his chance, and he blew it. He recused himself right at the beginning, just about on Day One on a ridiculous scam, the Mueller scam, the Russia, Russia, Russia scam.”
