Let me tell you a little story about ballot challenges within the Alabama Republican Party, just so we can put this whole “Tommy Tuberville beats the challenge” nonsense in the proper perspective.
Just four years ago, there was another, less high-profile ballot challenge filed against an ALGOP candidate running for the House of Representatives. The candidate’s name was David Cole and he was running for House District 10, along with Anson Knowles. It was Knowles who filed the challenge, and it was a good one—because Cole quite clearly didn’t live in the newly-drawn boundaries of HD10 and was lying about his address.
Literally, the address used by Cole was attached to a home owned by another man, who lived there with his family. He never moved. Cole never moved from his home with his family. In addition, the alleged lease was signed by Cole the day before the deadline to qualify. No one could possibly believe that Cole was living at that house, sharing space with a whole other family just to be able to represent the district.
Well, no one, that is, except the Alabama Republican Party’s candidate committee.
Not only did the members of the committee dismiss the challenge to Cole for a “lack of evidence,” they also kicked Knowles, the recent chairman of the Madison County Young Republican Club and actual resident of HD10, off the ballot because he once ran as a Libertarian candidate. That decision gave Cole the Republican nomination.
But fortunately (or unfortunately for Cole), things didn’t end there. I reported on Cole’s residency problems. Then, following his victory in the general election, another challenge was filed with the courts.
Moved out of the backrooms of ALGOP headquarters and into the bright spotlight of a courtroom and an accompanying deposition, Cole’s story fell utterly to pieces. Facing questions from attorney Barry Ragsdale, Cole admitted that he never spent a single night in the home, never moved most of his belongings there, maintained another residence in another district where he spent the majority of his time and essentially committed fraud by stating on official voter registration documents that he had moved when he in fact had failed nearly every test of residency.
Before Cole could be brought before the Alabama Legislature on this challenge, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office intervened, charging Cole with voter fraud for voting outside of his assigned polling location. He served a month in jail and has a felony conviction on his record.
If any of that sounds familiar to the situation involving Tommy Tuberville, it very much should.
Because like Cole in HD10, Tuberville is a resident of Alabama on paper only.
Just consider this: In 2021, Tuberville’s first year in the Senate, the first nine plane flights that Tuberville took and was reimbursed for through his Senate expense account were to airports along the Gulf Coast. For the entire first year, there is not a single flight listed on that report that landed in the state of Alabama. Because that’s not where Tuberville lives.
But I guess those details are for another day—one that will be spent in court in May, should Tuberville win the nomination.
For now, this is a discussion about a party that is apparently quite willing to ignore the laws of the state should it best suit it.
The Democratic frontrunner for governor, Doug Jones, said it best: “This is about what those in power in Montgomery want to maintain their power. There are serious questions about the residency of both Senator Tuberville and former GOP Chairman John Wahl, but it appears pretty obvious that the fix was in before Chairman Wahl resigned and that these challenges, all filed by Republicans, were never even going to be heard.”
The man isn’t wrong. And, in fact, Republicans in power in this state have created quite the recent record of ignoring laws and rules in order to do whatever the hell best suits them.
In fact, the worst part of the Cole debacle came well into the ordeal, when it was obvious to everyone that Cole was guilty as hell and that his case was going to wind up in front of a joint session of the Legislature to decide. Republicans literally tried to change the law.
A bill pushed by Representative Chris Pringle would have made it impossible to remove a legislator after he or she has been certified. That change would have ended the case against Cole and made it all but impossible to challenge the election of an ineligible candidate.
Don’t like being held accountable? Just change the laws on the fly, I guess.
When the challenges for Tuberville, lieutenant governor candidate John Wahl and others landed at ALGOP last week, many suspected that some seriously sketchy business was about to go down. And boy, did it ever.
Before Sunday’s votes ever took place, a screenshot began circulating among Republicans and the media that showed the eventual outcomes of several ballot challenges, including Tuberville’s, Wahl’s and state Senator Garlan Gudger’s. Those outcomes ended up being pretty much spot on, up and down the list, indicating to the Republican electorate that those outcomes were determined in a smoke-filled backroom long before the official votes were cast.
There have been other issues, as well. Like ignoring the violation of voting laws or the filing of mandatory state disclosures. Like turning a blind eye to obvious conflicts of interest or allowing for violations of campaign finance laws.
People see these things. And while Republicans have generally done a bang-up job separating the working class into teams that hate each other, there has been a growing disruption among many, even within the Republican Party, who are fed up with the good ol’ boy system of doing things.
People don’t like cheaters. They don’t like it when some people are held to the letter of the law while others are given free rein. People expect at least the appearance of fairness.
And for many conservative voters, it seems, the place to find that is not within the Alabama Republican Party.
