Dem
47
GOP
53
You can't beat somebody with nobody, and until yesterday, the Democrats only had a bunch of nobodies running for governor in Alabama. A hemp farmer. A perennial candidate. An online pastor. None of these people would even dent the armor of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who is sure to be the Republican nominee.
As of yesterday, however, the Democrats have a somebody, as former Senator Doug Jones jumped into the race. Given that he is the only Democrat to win statewide election in the 18 years since Jim Folsom Jr. was elected lieutenant governor, and given the name recognition that entails, Jones will easily clear the field of the unknowns, setting up a head-to-head showdown with Tuberville.
Cygnus foresaw this turn of events, and so has already released a poll of the Jones-Tuberville matchup. The good news for Jones is that the poll projects he will improve on the last Democrat to run for governor of Alabama (Yolanda Flowers) by 19 points. Wow! The bad news is that Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) won that election by 38 points, which means Jones is still 19 points in the hole.
Tuberville is, of course, dumb as a stump. Surely, he is the stupidest senator to serve in this century. In a normal world, that would be a political liability. In Alabama, in the year 2026, it most certainly is not, especially since he has the extremely relevant and all-important experience of having been a football coach. Given that "he's dumb" is not going to work, Jones has already made clear that he will focus on painting Tuberville as a carpetbagger, someone who actually lives in Florida and doesn't know or care about the issues in Alabama.
It's as good an angle as any, especially given that Southerners are not known for their love of carpetbaggers. That said, it surely is not enough to overcome such a huge deficit in the polls, and in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the governor's mansion since before the turn of the century. Jones' only real hope, we have to assume, is that he gets the same kind of assist he got in the Roy Moore election, and dirt about Tuberville, involving underage sexual dalliances, comes to light. Republican voters these days have an awful lot of tolerance for an awful lot of things, but underage sex stuff is apparently still a bridge too far, judging by the furor over the Epstein files.
But if Tuberville had that kind of skeleton in his closet, it surely would have come to light by now, right? It's possible that Jones knows something we don't, and that he has some very juicy oppo research he's just waiting to unleash at the perfect time. Stranger things have happened, we suppose. But until such a thing actually comes to pass, we have to assume his campaign is a lost cause. (Z)