Former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville’s campaign for U.S. Senate slammed incumbent Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, for receiving the majority of his campaign donations from outside of Alabama.
Tuberville’s campaign said Jones’s most recent Federal Election Commission filing shows that Jones raised more money from supporters in California than from Alabamians. In addition, 79 percent of the money that Jones raised originated from out-of-state versus only 21 percent from people in Alabama.
“Judging from his campaign finance reports, it looks like Democrat Doug Jones should be running for California’s U.S. Senate seat, not Alabama’s,” Tuberville said. “It explains why Doug Jones follows the lead of liberal California Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Kamala Harris when voting on the impeachment of President Trump, abortion, gun control, and other issues.”
Tuberville’s campaign said that the FEC quarterly report showed that Jones received $357,789 from Californians. Alabamians came in second with $328,476. Jones collected $177,747 from New York. Maryland and Massachusetts round out the top five fundraising states for Jones.
Jones collected $1.2 million from out of state and $328,476 from Alabama.
Tuberville said that Alabamians should be angered that Jones raised so much money from “infamously liberal California” because the West Coast state has targeted Alabama with a fierce economic reprisal and intimidation campaign for the last few years.
Several major California cities were among those that announced formal boycotts of Alabama last year after the state Legislature and Gov. Kay Ivey enacted the nation’s strictest abortion law.
On Tuesday, Tuberville beat former U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions in the Republican primary runoff. In recent polling, Tuberville leads Jones 47 to 44 percent. Jones continues to insist he has a path to victory.
In an email that went out nationally to Democratic donors after the Republican primary runoff, Jones warned that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies are trying to knock him out early and asked for Democratic donors’ support.
“Now that Trump’s handpicked candidate won the Republican primary, the GOP’s outside interest groups are on the attack,” Jones said. “They just began a massive advertising campaign totaling $5 million — and with polling showing me and my opponent in a dead heat, it’s urgent to counter their attack with everything we have.”
“I’m counting on supporters like you to invest in my race and races like mine while there’s still time to fight back against these attacks,” Jones added.
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Tuberville is a native of Arkansas. He was the head coach of the Auburn football team as well as the University of Mississippi, Texas Tech and the University of Cincinnati. He was the defensive coordinator at Miami, where he won a national championship, and at Texas A&M.
Tuberville is endorsed by President Donald Trump. Sessions held the seat for four terms but vacated it in 2017 after he was confirmed as U.S. attorney general. Former Clinton-era U.S. Attorney Jones defeated former Chief Justice Roy Moore in the special election to fill the remainder of Sessions’ unexpired term.
Republican Executive Committee member and member of Trump’s national victory committee, former State Rep. Perry Hooper Jr., warned Republicans not to underestimate Jones.
“Doug Jones has an 8-million-dollar war chest with more to come,” Hooper said. “He also has the national and state media on his side who will paint him as the smartest more virtuous Senator the state has ever seen. They may even start calling him Saint Doug. Fortunately, we have the facts on our side, his horrible voting record. This includes his vote to convict the President on both articles of impeachment and his vote against the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He can run but he cannot hide from his support of the radical Democrat Agenda.”
The general election is Nov. 3. There is still time to register to vote.
