Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones has a narrow path to keep his seat

Jones will appear on the ballot at the same time as President Trump, who in 2016, defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Alabama 62%-34%. No Democrat has won a Senate election in Alabama since 1992.

Jones is the most vulnerable senator up for reelection this 2020 cycle. And Alabama Democrats are playing on behalf of the former congressional staffer, federal prosecutor, and lawyer like they’ve got nothing to lose. After all, the Senate’s balance of power is at stake.

“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 state party tweeted Tuesday.

The tough talk didn’t stop there, with Alabama Democrats piling on in a flurry of online missives.

Senate Democrats only need three to four more seats to seize control of the chamber in the next Congress. If they hold onto Alabama, that is.

Jones himself has already gone on the offensive.

Late Tuesday, Jones touted his bipartisan accomplishments since becoming the first Alabama Democrat to win statewide office in almost a decade when he beat embattled Republican Roy Moore by less than 2 points in their 2017 special election to replace 20-year veteran Sessions in the Senate.

“The choice before the voters is an unprepared hyper partisan that will add to the divide in Washington, or my proven track-record to find common ground and get things done,” Jones wrote Tuesday of Trump-backed Tuberville. “We can choose One Alabama — and continue to move Alabama forward together and work for better health care, support our veterans, and bring back jobs from overseas.”

But early polls conducted before the general election matchup became official this week, foreshadowing problems for Jones. In fact, no survey analyzed by FiveThirtyEight this year gives the incumbent an edge. Auburn University at Montgomery research this month, for instance, puts Tuberville 8 percentage points ahead of the sitting senator. And the independent Cook Political Report lists Alabama as Republican-leaning.

Yet Jones has some advantages.

Jones has hauled in more campaign cash than Tuberville, who led Auburn to Southeastern Conference and Sugar Bowl titles during the 2004-2005 season. As of March 31, the centrist Democrat had raised almost $12 million dollars, with $8 million in the bank, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Meanwhile, Tuberville had brought in roughly $3 million, with $448,000 in his coffers, as of the end of May.

Tuberville’s also an untested candidate who refused to debate during the primary, said Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

Kalla reiterated Jones’s “unprepared” rhetoric after Tuberville, who returned from Florida for his senatorial bid, ran a “low-profile” primary. In doing so, he largely skirted inquires regarding a 2013 securities fraud settlement in which his hedge fund business partner was ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution and serve a decade in jail.

“Unprepared and unproven, Tommy Tuberville would be nothing more than a lackey for his Washington party leaders in the Senate. His campaign strategy has been to dodge the press and avoid tough questions,” she wrote in a statement.

Alabama’s slight demographic shift lifts Jones as well.

Like presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Jones is popular with Alabama’s black community.

The voting bloc, crucial to any successful Democratic coalition, comprised more than a quarter of Alabama’s general population last year. About the same level cast ballots. Data compiled by Alabama’s secretary of state in 2020 shows that of the approximately 3.3 million active registered voters, 874,000, or 26%, identify as black.

Jones has been boosted with the community by Biden and congressional colleagues such as Rep. Terri Sewell. Sewell, for one, was a key endorsement in 2017, highlighting his prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members over the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.

That’s in addition to the influx of more liberal professionals flocking to Madison County’s Huntsville area in Alabama’s north because of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Aside from already performing well in Jefferson and Montgomery counties, Democrats’ appeal to suburban voters may help Jones cling onto the Black Belt and Lee and Tuscaloosa counties.

“While Tuberville desperately tries to convince voters to look past his complete lack of experience and shady history, Sen. Jones is focused on bringing people together around kitchen table issues that matter most to families from Huntsville to Mobile,” Kalla added.

Still, Jones’s path to reelection will be a bruising head-to-head clash.

As of 2017, Republicans in deep-red Alabama had a 15-point voter registration advantage over Democrats. And the state is trending older, with fewer college graduates and Hispanics than its counterparts.

“Anti-Trump Democrat Doug Jones won’t win Alabama because he is a Democrat who takes marching orders from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, not the men and women of Alabama,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Paige Lindgren told the Washington Examiner.

For University of Alabama political science professor Stephen Borrelli, the biggest difference between 2017 and 2020 is that Trump will top the ticket, increasing turnout and energizing Republicans more than Democrats in contrast to three years ago. And congressional races are more and more party- and president-centric rather than about the candidate, he said in an interview.

“It would require a major decline in Trump’s support among Republicans, causing them to stay home or not cast straight-party ballots, to get Jones reelected. And I just don’t see that happening,” Borrelli said.

Borrelli pointed out that Sessions got little mileage out of Tuberville’s legal dramas, and Alabamians didn’t care about fraud allegations made against Trump.

“Tuberville is such an unknown quantity that it is possible some ethical revelation might come out, or he might say something so horribly offensive or stupid that it might cause Republicans [to] stay home or even vote for Jones,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen; he was such a high-profile figure, hated by half the state’s population as a football coach, that it’s hard to imagine he has skeletons in the closet comparable to Moore’s.”