Tommy Tuberville blinked.
Throughout the onslaught of reporting concerning his very obvious residency issues, specifically related to his flirtations with running for governor in Alabama, our senior U.S. Senator has remained publicly nonchalant about it all. Casually brushing aside questions and dismissing the very notion that he can’t meet the residency requirements – living in Alabama for the seven years prior to running for governor – as overblown ridiculousness.
It didn’t matter that a mountain of paperwork appeared to show that Tuberville’s primary residence was in Florida, at his multi-million-dollar home in Santa Rosa, Fla. Didn’t matter that he, himself, had gone on TV in 2017 and proclaimed that his home was in Santa Rosa. Didn’t matter that his name didn’t appear on a single piece of property in the state of Alabama.
Nope, it was all no bid deal, to hear Tuberville tell it.
Or, at least, it wasn’t.
Until last week. Until a story that appeared in Alabama Daily News – a very helpful story for Tuberville – for which he just happened to find time to comment.
In doing so, Tuberville basically said out loud what most objective people have known for some time: He can’t meet the seven-year requirement.
“You can go back to, as long as you’ve had a seven year…I was at Auburn 10 years and so I lived there for 10 years in a row,” Tuberville told ADN. “So it’s not your last seven years.”
Setting aside the utter absurdity of such a notion (I’ll get to that in a second), there’s only one reason Tuberville makes this statement. He’s searching for a loophole because he can’t simply meet the seven consecutive years requirement.
Why else would he say this?
Why else would he and his team be discussing property tax records at all?
If Tuberville truly believed that all of this was no biggie, that he has the records to back it all up and that he can go into court proceedings and answer questions under oath that prove he’s lived in that Auburn home for the last seven years, there’s no reason to be talking about loopholes. Right?
But he can’t. We all know he can’t. Because anyone with a shred of common sense knows that man lives at his very nice beach house in Santa Rosa, Fla., just like he told us he did six months after he moved there full time in 2017.
Look, I don’t blame the guy. It’s a nice place. And it’s on the beach. If I could get away with living there and working in Alabama, I’d do it.
The trouble is being governor doesn’t allow for out-of-state commuting. Nor should it. If you’re going to do all of the stupid stuff our state government does, the least you could do, as part of that state government, is live here and deal with it too.
And yes, to be eligible, you have to have lived here the seven years prior to the election. Good Lord. Who would even think such a thing could be in question – that it could be any seven years? You really think you can live here from birth until you’re 7 years old, move to France, and then jet back in 50 years later and be eligible to run for governor?
It’s ludicrous.
The state constitution says candidates, among other things, must have been “resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”
The Alabama Code literally states: “The word ‘preceding’ means next before.”
You see what I mean? Ludicrous.
But that’s not the end of it. As al.com’s Kyle Whitmire pointed out in a column on Friday, Tuberville’s other key piece of evidence – a 2018 homestead exemption filed by his wife Suzanne and their son Tucker on the house in Auburn – raises even more questions. Primarily because both Tubervilles – Tommy and Suzanne – voted in Florida in 2018, a few months after that exemption was originally filed.
According to Florida law, that could be somewhat problematic for Suzanne Tuberville. Because state law there labels it a felony to “vote in a precinct in which you do not live.” The statute of limitations has likely expired on such a charge, but still, not exactly a great look for a sitting U.S. Senator and his wife.
Now, obviously, there’s another loophole here. The Tubervilles could say that the homestead exemption was actually their son’s, since he’s on the deed. That could avoid the whole voter fraud stuff.
But that opens up another issue, of course: If the homestead exemption didn’t apply to Suzanne in 2018, when did it? Or did it ever? And did it ever apply to Tommy Tuberville?
This is a dangerous little slope upon which Tommy Tuberville is placing himself, unless he’s 100 percent certain that he has the documents and evidence to back up his residency claims. If he doesn’t, and if he finds himself in a deposition answering questions under oath, what’s he going to say about voting in Alabama for the past six years? Because the statute of limitations hasn’t run on that.
Now, maybe he does have all of that. But I’d bet there was a reason for that big blink last week.
