Mobile, Ala. — It was barely more than a week ago when we thought the 2020 race for Senate in Alabama couldn’t get any weirder, but it already has — substantially so, in both major parties.
On April 30, we reported that Republicans are waiting to see if “Ten Commandments Judge” Roy Moore and “Luv Guv” Robert Bentley will join the race with ex-Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville and Rep. Bradley Byrne. Now, the Democrats also may have a contest, with state Rep. John “you kill them now or you kill them later” Rogers threatening to challenge incumbent Sen. Doug Jones. Plus there’s another entrant on the Republican side, pushed by a Washington big-money group, along with news that Tuberville actually has been registered to vote in neighboring Florida.
Oh, and the Cheney family is involved as well.
At this rate, the Joker and the Penguin will enter the race claiming Gotham City is actually part of Alabama.
My colleague Becket Adams did a wonderful job assessing the possible entry of Rogers into the Democratic fray. His entry would hurt Jones no matter who wins. Suffice it to say that, in very anti-abortion Alabama, the position of being only slightly less pro-abortion than the guy who says “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later” is not exactly a winning general-election stance. And that’s only if Jones actually wins the nomination against Rogers who, until he went off the abortion deep end, was seen as a savvy, veteran pol.
On the Republican side, Moore has yet to officially announce and Bentley probably has no real intention of running. But second-term state Rep. Arnold Mooney, a hard-line conservative who served as campaign chairman for Rep. Mo Brooks’ underperforming Senate effort in 2017, has now announced he’s in the race as well. Brooks is expected to support him, as is the right-wing national money group Club for Growth, which has been agitating for months to recruit a candidate.
Club for Growth has a mixed history of spectacular successes and spectacular failures in Republican primaries, the worst of the latter probably being its support for disastrous candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada in 2010.
Mooney is the father of the president of Blaze Media, and national Blaze pundit Daniel Horowitz is already in his camp. Mooney may be hoping to swipe the supposed outsider’s mantle from Tuberville, who may fade due to the embarrassing revelation just days ago that his voter registration was still active in Florida. That news spurred veteran conservative state Sen. Arthur Orr, a respected power at the State Capitol, to portray Tuberville as a carpetbagger who should “forget about” running.
Meanwhile, the more conventional Byrne keeps plugging away, raising lots of money and working every corner of the state. It turns out that he has some big-name backing: Earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney were slated to be in Mobile for a Byrne fundraiser. (The vice president was otherwise occupied at the last minute.) Byrne and the younger Cheney, a conservative stalwart, are close allies on the House Armed Services Committee, where both strongly support President Trump’s rehabilitation of American military might.
Alabama Republicans tried the outsider route for governor in 2010 and got Bentley, who ended up resigning in disgrace. They tried the outsider route again for a special Senate election in 2017 and got Moore, who lost to a Democrat in this otherwise heavily Republican state. Will they go outsider again in 2020, at the risk of strike three? Byrne must be hoping they finally decide a conventional, solid conservative is the sensible choice.
