The battle over Tommy Tuberville’s residency is taking center stage.
On Monday morning, in a surprise move, the Alabama Republican Party informed Ken McFeeters, whom Tuberville defeated in May’s Republican primary, that its candidate committee would hear McFeeters’ challenge to Tuberville’s candidacy. McFeeters has loudly and consistently challenged Tuberville to prove that he meets the state’s requirement that gubernatorial candidates live in Alabama for seven years before the general election.
According to an email McFeeters said he received Monday morning from the party’s attorney, a hearing on the issue was being set for June 13 or 14 at the office of Balch & Bingham in Birmingham. McFeeters said he was “completely shocked” by the turn of events, and rightly so.
Until Monday, Tuberville and Alabama Republican Party officials had mostly ignored or dismissed McFeeters’ challenges, including a post-qualifying challenge McFeeters filed that the party dismissed as “facially defective” with little discussion. Tuberville and his staff have consistently maintained that he could prove he meets residency requirements and that questions about his residency were little more than “distractions.”
That made the decision by the party’s candidate committee on Monday all the more curious, but by Monday evening, it became clear that Tuberville’s camp was ready to push back with some substance.
According to sources familiar with the process, Tuberville’s attorney began sending documents late Monday afternoon, including Tuberville’s tax returns and property tax receipts, to various entities in preparation for the party hearing. Two sources said it appears Tuberville’s camp will acknowledge that the state’s senior U.S. senator has taken temporary leave from Alabama at times over the past seven years but has never been gone long enough to relinquish citizenship. They will use tax returns, a driver’s license and voting records to make that case.
“We’re happy to put the residency issue to bed,” Tuberville’s campaign office said in a statement released to media. “It has served its purpose, and it’s time to provide the facts and move on. We will submit a comprehensive response to the Republican Steering Committee, including Coach Tuberville’s tax returns, property records, and other documentation demonstrating that he is a resident citizen of Alabama and has been for well beyond the period required under the Alabama Constitution.”
However, the hearing process, as laid out in the party bylaws, would still seem to pose a challenge to Tuberville because it allows McFeeters, or his attorneys, the opportunity to issue five subpoenas for witnesses and five subpoenas for documents and to question witnesses under oath in a deposition for up to two hours.
Aside from the tax returns, which have long been a focal point of McFeeters and various media outlets, the biggest challenge facing Tuberville was convincing a court that he and his wife primarily resided in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Auburn, not in their multimillion-dollar beach house in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. McFeeters made clear Monday that he would make that one of his primary focuses and that he planned to subpoena Tuberville, his wife and one of the couple’s sons for depositions.
“I want to ask Mrs. Tuberville, under oath, if she really shared one bathroom with her husband, grown son and all of their house guests for the past seven years,” McFeeters said. “I think that’s a question that will get a very interesting answer.”
While that might seem like a flippant comment, such a question—perhaps phrased differently—is important when determining a person’s legal residence. Records such as tax returns and driver’s licenses help tell the story, but nothing matters more than determining where a person spends most of his or her time, where that person’s primary possessions are kept, where they sleep most often and where they most often participate in the daily routines of life.
Tuberville’s spending habits and travel routines during his time in office, along with a variety of documents, continue to raise questions about those matters. As APR and other outlets have reported over the past year, there is substantial proof within his Senate reimbursements and PAC spending that he spends considerable time on the Florida coast and little evidence that he has spent similar time in Auburn.
Those questions will have to be answered because, no matter the outcome of McFeeters’ party challenge, Tuberville almost assuredly will face a legal challenge in circuit court over his residency status. In that venue, the legal specifics of residency will matter a great deal.
