Sessions forced into runoff for Alabama Senate seat
In other Senate races, national Democrats got their desired candidate in North Carolina, while the Texas primary is headed to a runoff.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville in a runoff for the Alabama GOP Senate nomination after they finished in the top two spots in Tuesday’s primary.
Tuberville had 33 percent of the vote and Sessions had 31 percent with 75 percent of precincts reporting when The Associated Press called the race. They defeated a handful of other candidates, including Rep. Bradley Byrne, who came in third place, and Roy Moore, the controversial judge who lost a 2017 special election and finished a distant fourth Tuesday.
The March 31 runoff will decide which Republican takes on Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Republicans’ top offensive target on the Senate map this cycle.
Sessions now faces a four-week sprint to try to win over a majority of Republican voters to get a shot at returning to the Senate for a fifth term. The biggest question remains whether President Donald Trump, who stayed out of the primary despite his well-known antipathy for Sessions, will endorse Tuberville and try to slam the door closed on Sessions’ comeback bid and political career.
Although he stopped short of endorsing Tuberville, the president was quick to signal Wednesday morning that he is far from ready to bury the hatchet with Sessions.
This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt,” Trump wrote on Twitter, sharing a link to a POLITICO story about the runoff Sessions will face. “Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins!”
After his surprise entrance into the race in November, Sessions took pains to avoid his falling out with Trump, continuously reminding voters that he was the first senator to endorse the now-president during the 2016 campaign. The remaining goodwill among primary voters was enough to lift Sessions into one of the top two spots in the primary. But his roughly 30 percent showing was a disappointing finish and foreshadowed potential difficulty growing his support in a one-on-one battle against Tuberville, especially if Trump engages in the race.
Tuberville, the former football coach, has been running as a non-politician and outsider, a theme on which he’s likely to continue to rely against Sessions, who has been in public office for nearly three decades. He’s also likely to continue running on a promise to be a Trump ally, hoping to peel away voters frustrated by Sessions’ tenure in the Trump administration.
But Tuberville will also likely face significantly more scrutiny from Sessions, whose campaign began to run attack ads against the football coach in the closing days of the race.
Other Senate races
In North Carolina, Cal Cunningham won the Democratic Senate primary to face Republican Sen.Thom Tillis in November in a matchup that will be critical for control of the Senate majority.
Cunningham, an Army veteran and former state senator, easily defeated state Sen. Erica Smith and several other candidates. Cunningham had widespread support in the state and was also endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Democrats invested a hefty sum on TV ads to boost Cunningham, who entered as a little-known figure to the state’s voters — the last time he appeared on a ballot was his losing effort in the 2010 Senate primary. Outside groups spent more than $11 million on ads boosting his candidacy, and Cunningham spent seven figures and also ran coordinated ads with the DSCC. The ads were effective in lifting his name identification and favorability in the closing weeks of the primary.
The party also had to fend off an intervention from Republicans, who aimed to cause chaos in the primary. A super PAC that was funded by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spent nearly $3 million boosting Smith — 10 times more than her campaign raised for the entire race. Democrats expressed alarm at the intervention and increased their spending significantly, but ultimately Cunningham was able to win the primary by a safe margin.
In Texas, the Democratic primary to face Sen. John Cornyn is headed to a runoff in May. MJ Hegar, a veteran who narrowly lost a House race in 2018, earned the first spot in the runoff, a boost for the DSCC, which endorsed her candidacy. But she was well short of a majority.
Royce West, a longtime state senator from Dallas, narrowly edged out activist Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez for the second runoff spot with 15 percent of the vote with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Tzintzún Ramirez, who was at 13 percent, conceded the election results in a statement from her campaign Wednesday afternoon before The Associated Press called the race.
Hegar led the field in fundraising during the primary and enters the runoff as the frontrunner. West, who has been in office for nearly two decades, is a powerhouse in his home area of Dallas but will need to expand his support throughout the state to be competitive in May.