MOBILE, Alabama — Alabama just taught incumbent Democratic Sen. Doug Jones the lesson that a superb campaign against an unimpressive opponent cannot make up for a senator consistently voting against his constituents’ views.
Jones was elected in a special election in a fluke when his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, got caught up in a scandal involving allegations of long-ago untoward advances toward teenage girls. Alabama is a heavily Republican, heavily conservative state. Jones is not just a Democrat, but a rather liberal one. He is especially liberal on abortion in an extremely pro-life state. He also voted against Trump’s judicial nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett in a state that strongly supported both.
The gold standard of conservative ratings, the American Conservative Union, gives Jones just an 18% rating. So-called moderate Democrats usually rate in the 30s or low 40s. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gives Jones a 75. That means he votes leftward 3 out of 4 times. That’s not moderate. The state’s conservative voters noticed. Jones doesn’t represent their views. Period.
That’s why it didn’t matter that Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn University, is amazingly ignorant on national issues. It didn’t matter that he was still registered to vote in Florida when he qualified to run for the Senate in Alabama. It didn’t matter that Tuberville has a very shady financial past and a history of precipitously leaving coaching jobs in less than honorable fashion. It didn’t matter that Tuberville hid from the press, refused to debate, and ran commercials so cliched in their pro-Trump, anti-socialist, good-ol’-boyness that they looked like the sort of Hollywood caricatures of the South that Southerners usually resent.
It also didn’t matter that Jones had raised more than $8 million while Tuberville exited a hard-fought primary almost broke or that Jones used that money to blanket TV screens with superbly well-crafted commercials. The ads made Jones look like a nice guy, a hard worker, and a straight shooter. They effectively explained the Tuberville financial shenanigans and other ethical questions. They did everything that TV ads possibly can do to sell a candidate, but this was a candidate who just could not be sold to consumers that didn’t want his product. Selling Jones to Alabama’s voters is like selling tofu to devoted carnivores.
U.S. representatives and senators have dual roles: first, to accept powers delegated to them by the voters so as to use their informed judgment to make policy choices, but second, to represent the views of their constituents when those views are clear. Jones acted as if he were a delegate with perfectly free reign for his policy views but ignored his function as a representative of his constituents’ opinions.
That’s why, even as an incumbent who served without scandal and who worked hard, Jones received well under 40% of the vote for reelection. Jones didn’t stay close to his constituents’ views. That’s why, no matter how honorably or diligently he served, he is being fired. And in a representative democracy, he deserves it.
