Taking a break from the presidential election, I want to take you down to the very heated Senate race in Sweet Home Alabama.
Jeff Sessions, the former U.S. attorney general, is running for his old seat, currently occupied by Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly defeated Roy Moore in the 2017 special election, becoming the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in the state since 1992.
Sessions should be able to make a clean getaway, right? Well, it’s not so simple. He faces his toughest challenge yet in former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville, who’s making the argument that he’ll be a loyal fighter for President Trump unlike Sessions who betrayed the president over his recusal.
That recusal stemmed just a few weeks after Sessions was confirmed to be President Trump’s attorney general, where he was exposed in the media for his previously undisclosed contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. After mounting pressure to resign on the heels of the Michael Flynn saga, Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe over possible conflicts of interest, ushering in the special counsel Robert Mueller who conducted an almost two-year investigation into the president. The ending, of course, is that no conclusive evidence was found to assert that then-candidate Trump colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 presidential election.
So with that quick recap, you can understand why Sessions is a persona non grata in Washington. In the first round of the Alabama Senate primary, Sessions finished second behind Tuberville. But he has one last shot in the July 14th runoff.
Trump is so disappointed in Sessions that he ended up endorsing Tuberville, saying Sessions let the country down.
But Sessions views it differently.
In a recent interview on my podcast “Hashing it Out,” the former attorney general said he was just following the law.
“We had a disagreement about the recusal ,” Sessions explained. “I did what the law required me to do. Former Attorney General Ed Meese said if Sessions hadn’t recused himself, he would’ve broken the law.”
Meanwhile, it’s not all sunshine and roses for Tuberville.
Tuberville has come under fire recently for his role in a financial fraud scheme of a hedge fund he co-founded. Additionally, when he was the head coach at Auburn, Tuberville gave Clifton Robinson, a player on his team who was charged of second-degree rape of a 15-year-old girl when he was 20, a one-game suspension. Robinson ended up pleading guilty to contribution to the delinquency of a minor.
During the coronavirus pandemic, voter turnout will be lower than expected, which means each vote carries more weight. Both candidates have little room for error, but once they get past the run-off, the primary winner will almost certainly to coast to victory in November.
