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Alabama will get a rematch between Tommy Tuberville and Doug Jones in the November governor’s election, after both former political rivals won their respective primaries on Tuesday and set up their second head-to-head matchup. At the same time, the state’s open U.S. Senate race will move to a June runoff election, with both parties’ nominees facing another contest next month.
The governor rematch follows Tuberville’s earlier victory over Jones in 2020, when the Republican senator unseated Jones in a race that had drawn national attention. Jones, who had been elected to the Senate in 2017 but served a short tenure in a heavily Republican state, is seeking a political comeback and a rare Democratic statewide win.
In his bid for governor, Jones framed his campaign around changes he said voters want on wages and healthcare. “Change means rising wages, including raising the minimum wage,” Jones said. “Change means expanding Medicaid to make healthcare affordable. Change means better jobs.”
Tuberville, a former college football coach who entered the governor’s race after GOP activity for Senate nominations crowded the field, cast the rematch less as a personal rivalry than a debate over ideology. “I’m not running against him. I’m really not. I’m running against socialism and communism,” Tuberville said, adding that he sees the contest as opposing a “far left” ideology that he said has “nothing to do with the last 250 years.”
The Senate primary, meanwhile, advanced to the June 16 runoff after Republicans and Democrats selected their next set of candidates. Tuberville’s decision to run for governor helped shape the Senate field, which is expected to stay Republican given the state’s political makeup.
For the Republican nomination, U.S. Rep. Barry Moore advanced to a runoff. Moore is a three-term congressman and a member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, and he told supporters Tuesday night, “We’re going to win this thing, and God’s going to bless this great nation.” The former president Donald Trump endorsed Moore, and Trump also delivered a message by telephone rally Monday night saying, “Barry is going to do a fantastic job. He will fight for you in the Senate.”
Moore has described his approach in stark terms during the race, saying he would be the candidate to take on Washington politics. “God’s going to send a garbage man to the United States Senate,” Moore said Tuesday, while describing the position as a way to “take out the trash” in Washington.
The other Republican runoff slot was still undecided early Tuesday night between Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson. On the Democratic side, business owner Dakarai Larriett and lawyer Everett Wess advanced to a runoff, though either candidate would face an uphill path in deep-red Alabama.
Beyond the races for governor and Senate, Alabama’s Tuesday voting was shaped by redistricting disputes that officials say could overturn results in multiple House districts. Voters cast ballots across all seven congressional districts, but the state plans to void the results in four districts and hold new primaries in August under a revised map.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey set special primary elections for Aug. 11 in the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts, and the change followed permission the state received to switch to a different congressional map. Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said Tuesday’s votes will be tabulated in the four affected districts but will be “void for the purposes of determining the party nominees,” while the Aug. 11 primary would determine nominees in winner-take-all contests without a runoff.
The largest change involves the 2nd Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, with the district spanning from Mobile through Montgomery to the Georgia border under current lines. However, those lines remain tied up in litigation, with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other groups seeking to stop the new map; if they succeed, Tuesday’s primary winner would determine the party nominees, but if the new map proceeds, the Aug. 11 special primary would decide which nominees appear on ballots in November.
Voters also expressed confusion over the map fights as they headed to polling places. Anthony Lee, 80, said he was upset about Alabama’s plan to change the maps, arguing that the move would dilute support for Black voters, telling reporters while walking up to his polling place in Tuskegee, “I’m totally against them changing maps,” adding, “It’s diluting the Black vote.”
The redistricting disputes were not the only contested ballot issue for statewide office. In the Republican attorney general primary runoff, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell advanced alongside Katherine Robertson, the chief counsel for Attorney General Steve Marshall. The attorney general nomination winner will face Jeff McLaughlin, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
The race over attorney general also drew attention to an IVF-related court ruling. The reporting said an outside group funded an advertisement critical of Mitchell for writing the main court opinion that led to in vitro fertilization clinics in Alabama temporarily shutting down, with the ruling stating that frozen embryos could be considered “unborn children” and that couples could pursue wrongful death claims after their embryos were destroyed in a hospital accident. Mitchell said he supports IVF, and he disputed the advertisement’s portrayal of the case as distorting facts.