Former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his endorsement of Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks in the state’s Republican Senate primary has left the other candidates in the field vying to secure that endorsement for themselves in a newly competitive and contentious contest.
Trump in March rescinded his endorsement of his longtime ally Brooks, who has thus far failed to gain traction as a Senate candidate, as rivals Mike Durant and Katie Britt increased their own support.
Trump has made backing his baseless claims of systemic election fraud a condition of his support and pointed to comments by Brooks suggesting that Republicans should move on from the 2020 election as the cause of his reversal.
“Mo Brooks was a leader on the 2020 Election Fraud, and then, all of a sudden, during the big rally in Alabama, he went ‘woke’ and decided to drop everything he stood for — when he did, the people of Alabama dropped him, and now I have done so also,” Trump said in a statement. “The people get it, but unfortunately, Mo doesn’t.”
In his statement, Brooks said he supported Trump “between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6” when “it counted.” Brooks also said Trump asked him to “rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” which he told him was illegal.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, David Hughes, a political science professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, said the claim Brooks went woke is “ridiculous.”
“Nobody believes that,” Hughes said. “He un-endorsed Brooks because Brooks was, you know, tanking in the polls.”
Hughes said it is “no coincidence” that Trump’s rescinded endorsement coincided with a new Gray TV/Alabama Daily News poll showing Brooks in third place in the primary with just 16% support.
The poll found Durant, a former Army pilot shot down in Somalia in 1993 and later depicted in the film Black Hawk Down, in the lead, followed by Britt, former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Hughes said the two candidates in the lead both have an “awareness” that Trump’s endorsement is now “up for grabs.”
“So, I think you’ll now see some auditioning behavior,” he said.
But how much weight would a Trump endorsement carry in the race since such an endorsement did not seem to help Brooks? Strategists and political scientists interviewed by the Washington Examiner suggested that Brooks has a grassroots, retail politics approach that, combined with a smaller war chest, did not help him make waves outside of the district where he is already a known quantity. But the other candidates’ newer public profiles may get more of a boost from a Trump endorsement than did Brooks.
David Mowery, an Alabama political consultant, said, “I think that the Trump endorsement alone, for a guy like Mo Brooks, was not enough to overcome his sort of like, his endemic issues,” and the rescinded endorsement leaves him with virtually no path forward.
“The biggest problem for anybody in this race, vis-a-vis being on the wrong side of a Trump endorsement, is that it’s impossible in a Republican primary environment,” Mowery said. “You can’t attack it. You can’t say, ‘President Trump made the wrong choice.’ You can’t say, you know, ‘We didn’t want the endorsement.’ You can’t say, ‘My values don’t align with the president’s,’ or whatever. And so, you’re really in a pickle in terms of that.”
Thomas Shaw, a political science professor at the University of South Alabama, told the Washington Examiner should Trump choose to endorse one of the other candidates, it may be enough to help that candidate win without a runoff election.
Mowery and Shaw said Durant and Britt each have a persona that may appeal to Trump.
“Somebody described him to me as Alabama’s version of Rambo,” Mowery said of Durant while adding he sees Britt as a strong candidate.
Shaw said Britt carries an appeal for evangelical voters, which is “a good tone” in Alabama, but said his theory is that Trump will endorse Durant because of his “military, tough-guy persona,” quipping that he will do so “despite the fact that he got captured,” a reference to an infamous Trump comment about the late Sen. John McCain.
