Doug Jones might have a shot after all
While a number of Senate seats once thought to be easily winnable by Republicans are now suddenly competitive, one of the harder seats for Democrats to keep has always been Sen. Doug Jones’ seat in Alabama, since he won by just a slight margin during the 2017 special election to replace Jeff Sessions’ seat, and the state is pretty solid red, one of the few places where Donald Trump has a solid double digit lead.
However, there are some reasons for Doug Jones to stay optimistic. He’s got a reasonably high favorability rating among his constituents, an incumbency advantage and a few polls are showing him within striking distance of his opponent, Tommy Tuberville. Although Tuberville is a popular former football coach, he’s not without baggage that could hurt his chances. First, Palmer Report wrote about an opioid scandal that involved Tuberville when he was still a primary candidate for senate, but now, he’s got one even worse.
Tuberville runs an organization that claims to provide aid to veterans – but newly released tax records show that it only paid out $5,000 of the $40,000 it raised, suggesting that he’s running a scam. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Jones’ campaign, which released a statement: “Maybe the veterans got short-changed because Tommy wanted to run for governor or the Senate. This is not public service. He is not a public servant. This is just someone that’s doing this for his own benefit. He’s the swamp that’s taking care of it itself.”
They said what we’re all thinking. Tuberville is surprisingly reminiscent of the guy in the White House he aspires to be, and unfortunately, begging for help from Trump may not go over well, as it could just draw further national attention to Trump’s own charity scandals at the worst possible time. There’s still a possibility that Jones could win this, and that Democrats could win anywhere across the country – provided we do all we can to boost turnout and vote by November 3.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making