Ken McFeeters isn’t going away anytime soon, it seems.
A Republican nominee for governor, McFeeters has for the past several months—and particularly, the last couple of weeks—become an absolute thorn in the side of Republican frontrunner Tommy Tuberville.
McFeeters filed a detailed challenge to Tuberville’s certification by the party, alleging that he cannot meet the state’s residency requirements. Those requirements specifically state that a candidate for governor must have been a resident-citizen of the state for seven years next before the election.
That challenge was tossed quickly by the Alabama Republican Party’s candidate committee, which deemed it facially deficient and never examined the detailed allegations. That denial allows Tuberville to avoid a hearing before the party’s steering committee, where further details of Tuberville’s residency issues were undoubtedly set to come to light.
But that setback isn’t stopping McFeeters.
On Monday, the day after his challenge was denied, McFeeters issued a public statement challenging Tuberville to release numerous documents, including his Alabama state tax returns from the past seven years, to prove he meets residency requirements. If Tuberville turned over the documents, McFeeters said he would drop out of the race and donate $1,000 to Tuberville’s campaign.
“This issue isn’t going away,” McFeeters promised.
On Tuesday, he made it clear that neither was he.
McFeeters is now promising to file a legal challenge to Tuberville’s entry on the ballot, and he said he plans to seek only the public documents that will prove or disprove Tuberville’s residency in the state. He also took several shots at the Alabama Republican Party for its decision to casually dismiss his challenge, saying the whole thing is about wealth.
“The ALGOP did not find that Senator Tuberville is domiciled in Alabama,” McFeeters stated in a press release. “It did not verify, investigate, or vet his residency. The Party merely stated that it was unwilling to examine the issue at all. That decision places the Alabama Republican Party in a deeply troubling position.
“The practical effect of this ruling is that if a candidate is wealthy enough to purchase a small property and declare it a “domicile of convenience,” the residency requirements of the Alabama Constitution can simply be ignored. In other words, the ALGOP has now set a precedent that you do not actually have to live in Alabama—or be domiciled here—to run for Governor. You only have to be rich.”
Tuberville’s campaign has brushed off the challenge, but the issue seems to be growing rapidly among the general public.
One reason for that is Tuberville’s apparent inability to provide the documents that McFeeters references, in particular, his tax returns. The Tuberville campaign turned over some documents to ALGOP in response to McFeeters’ ballot challenge, but the one documents that would put this whole thing to rest—his tax returns—weren’t provided.
The reason those are so important is that they’re the simplest solution to this. If Tuberville truly was a resident of the state, he would have to file state tax returns. Filing those returns wouldn’t necessarily prove him to be a citizen-resident in a court of law, but they would just about wrap things up in the court of public opinion.
For now, as McFeeters has pointed, that’s decidedly not the case.
“No one believes he lives here,” McFeeters said.
