BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Jeff Sessions is one step closer to his political comeback.
The former attorney general was one of two candidates to qualify for a Senate runoff election, with neither getting more than 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s Republican primary election.
Sessions, 72, will face off against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, 65, in the March 31 runoff election. The winner of that contest will compete against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who won a special election for Sessions’s old Senate seat when he joined the Trump administration.
Sessions had 32.5% of the vote, and Tuberville had 32.4% when the race was called shortly after 11 p.m. Rep. Bradley Byrne finished third with 25.2% at the time of the call.
Most polling showed Sessions narrowly ahead of his rivals, and he lacked the endorsement of his former boss, President Trump, after his tumultuous tenure as attorney general. Trump, who did not endorse anyone in the race, and Sessions had a public falling out over the attorney general’s recusal from overseeing the Russia investigation.
Despite the lack of endorsement, the candidates brawled over who was more loyal to the president.
“Others talk big about Trump, hoping to get your vote. But talk is cheap,” Sessions, who was the first senator to endorse Trump, said in a television ad. “I’ve been with him from the start because it’s the right thing for America.”
In one of Tuberville’s ads, he said Sessions “deserted President Trump, sticking us with the Russian witch hunt.” Byrne also jabbed Sessions about being fired as Trump’s first attorney general.
Jones, who is one of the most vulnerable Democrats running for reelection in 2020, wouldn’t say whether he would also use Sessions’s time as attorney general to his advantage in the general election.
“I really don’t want to comment on what I might do with somebody that may or may not get the nomination. Let’s see how this turns out. It’s a pretty rocky road over there for everybody right now. It’s pretty ugly on all sides,” he told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
