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State Sen. Sam Givhan finally said the quiet part out loud: Is Tommy Tuberville really about to run for governor — from his $6 million Florida beach house?
It’s the question Alabama politicos have been whispering ever since Tuberville floated the idea of trading Washington for Montgomery. But on Huntsville’s WVNN, Givhan didn’t whisper. He laid it out bluntly: owning a modest house in Auburn doesn’t cut it.
“So, as far as governor, the first thing, we still got a question, because owning a house in Alabama is not enough,” Givhan said. “I mean, you have to live here seven years … So, that’s going to be a hurdle.”
And what a hurdle it is — especially when the paper trail points straight to Florida’s white sands and blue water.
Givhan, for one, doesn’t sound convinced. During a recent interview on Huntsville’s WVNN, he openly questioned whether Tuberville’s living arrangements would hold up under scrutiny — and worried that any mess over residency could open the door for “crackpots.”
He’s not wrong — but the issue is more tangled than it looks.
APR has dug through real estate records, legal filings, and public documents trying to pin down where Tuberville has actually called home over the last seven years. If he really plans to jump into a governor’s race against well-funded, battle-ready contenders, he’ll need to prove one thing beyond doubt: that his legal, primary residence has been on Cherry Street in Auburn — not on Old Beach Road in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
That’s going to be tough. Because the paper trail — and the optics — aren’t on his side.
Let’s start with the basics. The Auburn home is a modest 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house in a middle-class neighborhood near Auburn University. It’s owned by Tuberville’s wife, Suzanne, and his son, Tucker, and valued at just under $400,000.
Compare that to the 4,000-square-foot, beachfront mansion on Old Beach Road in Florida — valued at about $6 million — that Tuberville has owned for two decades.
And here’s the kicker: in a 2017 ESPN interview, Tuberville himself made it sound like that beach house is exactly where he belongs.
“Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and the blue water,” Tuberville said in the video, recorded in July 2017 — the same year the Cherry Street house was purchased.
It doesn’t end there.
Legal documents from the 2023 purchase of yet another Florida condo list Tuberville’s primary residence as the same Old Beach Road mansion. The Auburn house? Not mentioned.
That Auburn house has drawn media attention before. In 2023, The Washington Post reported that Tuberville had sold off his last Alabama properties. At the time, his spokesperson insisted Tuberville primarily lived in the Cherry Street home.
The spokesperson’s explanation? The house was bought for Tucker while he was at Auburn. But that timeline didn’t quite line up: the purchase came after Tucker graduated and about a year before Tuberville’s younger son began school there.
When The Post pointed out the inconsistency, the story shifted. The spokesperson then claimed that Tucker lived there briefly, after which Tuberville himself moved in and made it his primary residence in 2017.
All while Tuberville was on national television touting his Florida life.
More documents are sure to surface, and Alabama law is clear: candidates for governor must have been residents of the state for seven consecutive years. This question isn’t going away, and national media will join Alabama reporters in asking:
Where does “Coach” really live?
