Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks will make a major announcement Monday night at an event in Huntsville. Brooks has already said that he will be running for office in 2022 for either the U.S. Senate or for re-election to Congress.
Many sources say that they expect that Brooks will announce that he is running for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama. Shelby, who is 86, has announced that he is retiring at the end of this term.
Brooks will be joined at the event by former President Donald Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller. Miller was Trump’s senior adviser for policy and White House director for speechwriting. Miller is a veteran insider of the Senate, having worked for former U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, from 2009 until he went to work for the Trump campaign in 2015. Miller is credited with writing immigration policy position papers for both Sessions and Trump.
“Biden and the Socialists don’t care if illegal aliens bring COVID into America through our porous southern border or what damage they do to American citizens,” Brooks said recently. “All the Socialists care about is making sure illegal aliens can, and do, vote for them.”
Brooks is currently serving in his sixth term representing Alabama’s 5th Congressional District. Brooks unseated incumbent Congressman Parker Griffith. Griffith was a Democrat who became disgruntled by President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and switched to the Republican Party. Brooks easily bested the moderate Griffith in the 2010 Republican primary and has easily bested every GOP primary or general election opponent he has faced since.
Brooks is a former Madison County Commissioner. He was a Republican state legislator prior to that. Brooks is an attorney, former prosecutor and a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
Brooks has been criticized by Democrats for his role in challenging the 2020 election. Brooks was the first congressman to suggest that Republicans could vote to reject the Electoral College results from states where they thought that the results were tainted. Brooks has been roundly criticized for his speech to a crowd of Trump supporters hours before they stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6.
Even some Republicans have criticized Brooks.
Columnist and former state Rep. Steve Flowers, R-Troy, who served with Brooks in the Alabama House of Representatives wrote recently:
“Brooks is an embarrassment to Huntsville and the Tennessee Valley. He truly has not accomplished anything of significance to help his district in the few years he has been in Congress. He prefers being a bomb-thrower to being an effective representative. … his latest exploits in Washington have made him a national poster boy for right-wing crazy theatrics and reflects poorly on Huntsville and indeed Alabama. Brooks has become a pariah and now actually hurts the growth and expansion of Alabama.”
The Alabama Democratic Party has already begun taking shots at Brooks’s Senate candidacy:
“This Monday, Mo Brooks is telling us exactly who he is by announcing his bid for the US Senate with none other than far-right extremist Stephen Miller. … Stephen Miller’s anti-immigrant dog-whistles were some of the most overtly and dangerously racist lies to come out of the Trump administration – and that’s a high bar. It’s bad enough that the disgraced, traitorous, bigoted Mo Brooks thinks he can run for Senate in Alabama. It’s even worse that he’s toting this xenophobic slimeball along with him.”
Brooks dismisses criticism from “socialist Democrats” and the “fake news media.”
“The Socialist Democrats and Fake News Media continue to sully my good name by taking my rally speech words out of context,” Brooks said recently. “They intentionally splice-and-dice my words and falsely claim my January 6th speech somehow caused the Capitol attack that was planned days and weeks in advance. They fold when confronted with the truth!”
Multimillionaire former Trump ambassador to Slovenia and philanthropist Lynda Blanchard is the only other candidate who has announced to this point. Other names that are being floated as possible Republican Senate candidates include Secretary of State John Merrill, Business Council of Alabama President and CEO Katie Boyd Britt, Congressman Gary Palmer and State Auditor Jim Zeigler.
Congresswoman Terri Sewell and former Sen. Doug Jones are possible Democratic candidates being discussed for the open Senate seat. However, Jones’s crushing defeat by coach Tommy Tuberville in 2020, despite outspending Tuberville four to one, clearly demonstrated the difficulty that any Democrat has of actually winning a statewide race in Alabama.
