Tag: 2020 U.S. Senate race
Sessions Criticizes School Board, Housing Authority for Cutting Ties with Church of the Highlands
When Jeff Sessions arrived at Woodlawn High School for a Wednesday morning press conference, Dr. Terrell E. Brown, the school’s principal, was waiting for him in the parking lot.
The press conference couldn’t be held on school grounds, he said — but Sessions was welcome to move to a parking lot across the street. Sessions’ campaign staffers begrudgingly acquiesced. “Well, that’ll make it part of the story,” one staffer muttered as they lugged the podium across the busy street.
The former U.S. attorney general and current U.S. Senate candidate was in Woodlawn to express his outrage over recent decisions by the Birmingham Board of Education and the Birmingham Housing Authority to cut ties with Church of the Highlands after founding pastor Chris Hodges “liked” several social media posts by the politically conservative group Turning Point USA.
“This is a matter of real importance,” Sessions said. “It deals concretely with the right of free speech and free expression of religious values and to be able to have independent ideas outside your work environment.”
Read more.
Sessions Pens Open Letter to Voters After Trump Endorses Tuberville in GOP Senate Primary Runoff
A stinging rebuke by President Donald Trump, plus Trump’s endorsement of his election opponent, has left former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions scampering to stay alive in the Republican Senate primary runoff race — and prompting Sessions to write an open letter to Alabama voters, explaining many of his actions while serving as the head of the Department of Justice.
Sessions released his letter on Tuesday morning through his campaign website and in emails to the news media, in which he reiterated his support of Trump’s policies and again explained his decision to recuse himself from the investigation of the Trump campaign and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Read more.
Contributors in the U.S. Senate Race
Following are lists of contributors of $5,000 and up to U.S. Senate candidates. Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat, faced no opposition from within his party and will be on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. Jeff Sessions and Tommy Tuberville are candidates for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat, and the winner of their July 14 GOP primary runoff will face Jones in the fall election. Read more.
Sessions Targets China, Calls for ‘Reset’ in Relationship
The outbreak of the new coronavirus has drastically altered the campaigns for Alabama’s runoff elections. Originally scheduled for March 31, runoffs for the Republican races for Congress and U.S. Senate are now postponed until July 14.
The pandemic and its total consumption of the news cycle have also shifted the narrative for candidates. Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running for his former seat in the U.S. Senate, has capitalized on the situation to take an aggressive position against China and highlight his foreign policy bonafides.
In the runoff, Sessions faces former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, who won 33% of the vote to Sessions’ 32% in the March 3 primary election. Todd Stacy of Alabama Daily News interviewed Sessions and talked about his campaign and the issues he is discussing.
Read more.
Ivey Delays Alabama Primary Runoff Election Until July 14
Gov. Kay Ivey today moved Alabama’s primary runoff elections from next Tuesday, March 31, until July 14 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Exercising my extraordinary powers under the Emergency Management Act, I am setting Alabama’s Primary Runoff Election for July 14, 2020,” Ivey said during a news conference this morning. “The ability to hold free and fair elections is an inherent right as citizens of the United States and the great state of Alabama, but the safety and wellbeing of Alabama citizens is paramount.”
She said recommendations that people practice social distancing and avoid crowds would be difficult to maintain in election day.
Read more.
New Poll Shows Tuberville Leading Sessions in Alabama Senate Race
MONTGOMERY — A new poll shows former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville with a double-digit lead over former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Republican runoff for U.S. Senate.
A survey conducted by Cygnal showed that if the March 31 runoff election were held today, 51.5% of voters would choose Tuberville, while 39.5% would choose Sessions. Nine percent of voters remained undecided. Read more.
In the Weeds: A Career of Fighting Has Led Byrne to Senate Showdown
MONTGOMERY — Bradley Byrne is a fighter.
That’s what Alabama’s 1st District Congressman says differentiates him from the field of other candidates in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, and there’s plenty of evidence that his previous experience backs that up.
Over a political career that has taken him from the state school board and the state Senate to the Alabama Community College System chancellor’s office and the U.S. House of Representatives, Byrne’s fights have been famous.
Perhaps the most successful was Byrne’s bout with the state’s two-year college system, which had been mired in a patronage scandal until he, a reform-minded governor and federal prosecutors came in to clean it up.
Perhaps the least successful was a run for governor in 2010 that saw him on a quixotic quest to take on the then-all-powerful state teachers’ association, only for that group to marshal untold resources to defeat him in the end.
Now Byrne finds himself in the middle of another high-profile fight as he seeks to win a U.S. Senate seat by first outmatching two better-known Republican rivals in former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. The winner of the Republican primary — or runoff, if needed — will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November. Read more.
In the Weeds: Sessions Campaigns as the Consistent Conservative He’s Always Been
RATTVILLE — Jeff Sessions hasn’t changed.
That’s his message to voters as he campaigns to be elected back to the Senate seat he held for 20 years before leaving it to become attorney general of the United States. He wants Republicans in Alabama to remember the rock-ribbed conservative who often irritated his party’s leadership by pushing his unique brand of conservatism that heavily influenced today’s Trump agenda.
But as he exits the passenger door of a black SUV and strides by himself into the Courtyard Marriott hotel, it’s clear that a lot has changed for Sessions. Read more.
In the Weeds: Tuberville Disrupts Senate Race as ‘Outsider’
MONTGOMERY — Tommy Tuberville does not care about your need for nuance.
In a political landscape where tricky issues can sometimes cause politicians to split hairs on policy, the former football coach and current candidate for U.S. Senate has found a winning formula: be blunt, keep it simple and always pivot back to President Donald Trump. Read more.
Where Democratic Presidential Candidates Stand on Major Issues
Alabama voters who choose a Democratic ballot for the March 3 party primaries will see a crowded slate of 14 presidential candidates, but nine of those have withdrawn from the race.
The remaining five active candidates are Joseph R. Biden, Michael R. Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The nine candidates who dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination are Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, John K. Delaney, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang, along with Tom Steyer, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, who withdrew from the race after disappointing results in Saturday’s primary in South Carolina.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, Democratic candidates selected the following topics as the top five issues in the party’s presidential primary: health care, climate change, gun policy, education and the distribution of wealth and income. Read about their stances.
