A panel on MSNBC discussed the prospect of voters writing in Jeff Sessions’ name on the ballot in the upcoming special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat he vacated when he was picked to be U.S. attorney general.
“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd floated the idea on Thursday after a bombshell Washington Post report containing accounts from four women alleging Moore sought sexual relations with them when they were teenagers.
Todd broached the topic while discussing chatter about a possible write-in candidate.
“If they can’t do [Rep.] Mo Brooks, by the way, that was the mistake,” he began. “They shouldn’t have gotten behind Luther Strange, Mo Brooks was the guy that could have straddled the two sides of the Republican base. They blew that.”
“I guess they could go back to Jeff Sessions, if the president is really that unhappy with him as his attorney general,” he added.
Todd referred to reports over the past year that Trump has been frustrated with Sessions, including after he said he wouldn’t have picked Sessions if he had known his attorney general would recuse himself from Russia-related probes.
“This is like the ‘Goldilocks’ solution,'” Politico’s Eliana Johnson said in reply to Todd. “I think Jeff Sessions would be the ‘just right’ porridge for the president.”
Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, and Sara Fagen, former White House political director for President George W. Bush, both concurred.
“You think he wants out of attorney general that bad?”, Todd asked.
“Yes. And get his seniority back,” Cook replied.
“Jeff Sessions certainly would qualify,” Fagen added, comparing the matter to a similar situation Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, went through in seeking re-election in 2010.
Murkowski said she spoke with Sen. Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the GOP primary, about running a write-in campaign for the special election. Strange declined to say whether he would do it.
