Name: Former Auburn football coach and Trump favorite Tommy Tuberville wins the Alabama GOP Senate primary
Brand: vox.com
SKU: vox-com-151
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Former Auburn football coach and Trump favorite Tommy Tuberville wins the Alabama GOP Senate primary

preview

The former Auburn University football coach will face Democrat Doug Jones in November.Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville defeated former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Alabama’s Republican primary runoff election on Tuesday, setting up a November match against current Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the state since 1992 when he defeated in a 2017 special election.In a state Donald Trump won handily in 2016, Tuberville is favored to win in November.Tuberville has never served in elected office (and only two years ago), and his campaign against Sessions was largely based on his support for the president. in March, tweeting, “Tommy was a terrific head football coach at Auburn University. He is a REAL LEADER who will never let MAGA/KAG, or our Country, down!” On a Monday call with Alabama voters, Trump said of Tuberville, “He’s going to have a cold, direct line into my office. That I can tell you.”Whether Tuberville was a “terrific” football coach at Auburn is a matter of some debate, but his close ties to college football — in a state where football is king — played a big role in his campaign against Sessions. I spoke to Bill Britt, editor-in-chief of the Alabama Political Reporter, who told me that while Sessions was enmeshed in his first real campaign since the mid-1990s, “Tuberville, who is a decade younger and appears to be much more vital, is proving to be very good at one-on-one politicking.”Britt added that Tuberville’s college football experience was perhaps paying off in a new arena. “Years of recruiting players and back-slapping wealthy alumni has given him a far greater ability to reach people in rural Alabama,” Britt said. “A Republican has to win rural Alabama to win any primary.”Tuberville’s football past could play a surprisingly big part in November’s general election. Though he gained national attention for leading the Auburn Tigers to an undefeated season in 2004, a one-game suspension to a player who was charged with the second-degree rape of a 15-year-old girl. Despite the player pleading guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Tuberville permitted the player to remain on the team.Tuberville also abandoned Texas Tech and assistant coaches mid-dinner in 2012, the night before he announced he would take a new job at the University of Cincinnati. And then in 1998 when, as then-head coach at the University of Mississippi, he promised he would only leave the job “in a pine box” — and then flew to Auburn two days later to become head coach of the Tigers.On the field, as Sessions’s campaign noted on Twitter, Tuberville’s stints at Auburn, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati did not end successfully. “He was the leader of a team that went bad,” Sessions July 11.Whether he’ll serve his team well in November remains to be seen.If watching you coach taught me anything , it’s that you’re no good at sitting on a lead. That’s why you finished 5-7 and 4-8 in your last seasons at Auburn and Cincinnati. If you are too weak to debate, you do not deserve to represent the people of Alabama. — Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions)Millions turn to Vox to understand what’s happening in the news. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.Understand how policy impacts people. Delivered Fridays.

The former Auburn University football coach will face Democrat Doug Jones in November.Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville defeated former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Alabama’s Republican primary runoff election on Tuesday, setting up a November match against current Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the state since 1992 when he defeated in a 2017 special election.In a state Donald Trump won handily in 2016, Tuberville is favored to win in November.Tuberville has never served in elected office (and only two years...

public

Jane Coaston

Vox is a liberal-leaning American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix.

Former Auburn football coach and Trump favorite Tommy Tuberville wins the Alabama GOP Senate primary

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS