What is it with these Republicans that they ignore the Constitution and the laws of Alabama to do what they please? First of all, the Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, John Wahl, has admitted his foul play on being a resident of the State of Tennessee and voting in Alabama with a FAKE homemade ID! Felony! Why has this not been addressed by the Attorney General’s Office? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because Steve Marshall chose to close his eyes to a fellow Republican. Close your eyes and imagine if that were Doug Jones!
The office of the AG in any state mostly handles business that puts partisan politics aside and simply does the job. We can see that is not the case in this particular situation. Marshall could be the worst Attorney General in Alabama’s history. He is another Republican dead set against women’s rights. This state is overrun with opioid addiction, political corruption, mass pollution, a broken court system, and gun smuggling, and what does Marshall do? He spends his time attempting to block the Equal Rights Amendment from being in the Constitution! Once again, why do women vote for these jerks?
How can we ignore the E.J. Bradford case? Bradford was the young black man who was gunned down in the Galleria by overzealous cops. In spite of video evidence that showed Bradford was never a threat, Marshall cleared the cop who murdered Bradford. The evidence was clear that the cop never issued a command to warn Bradford before shooting him three times in the back. Steve Marshall is running to take Tuberville’s seat in the Senate! This is all we need. Another Senator who ignores the law.
Republicans spent a lot of their time trying to make it harder to vote. They tried and failed in 2023 to redistrict the voting map in Alabama that would have violated the Voting Rights Act. In a state with seven congressional districts and a 27% Black population, the GOP-dominated legislature had created just one congressional district in which Black voters are either a majority or close to it.
Voter fraud is not as big a problem as absentee voting, which the Republicans have made very difficult. There have been 25 voter fraud convictions in Alabama in the last 24 years, one of which involved former Rep. David Cole, a Republican who did not live in the District that he was elected from. Cole, a Representative from Madison County, pleaded guilty to voting in a polling place where he was not legally eligible to vote in. Some of this responsibility falls on the Alabama Republican Party who has the task of making sure that their candidates qualify before putting them on the ballot.
When Cole’s opponent in the 2022 GOP primary, Anson Knowles, told the party that Cole didn’t live in the north Alabama House district he was running for, the executive committee kicked Knowles, not Cole, off the primary ballot, claiming Knowles was a Libertarian, not a real Republican. Oh, it gets better! The Alabama Republican Party routinely disqualifies candidates for having once been Democrats. News flash! Most Alabama Republicans over the age of 60 were likely once Democrats! The same year the party kicked Knowles off the primary ballot, it also disqualified Tuscaloosa businessman Tripp Powell, who sought to unseat state Sen. Gerald Allen. Powell’s unforgivable sin was that he had once given Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, a Democrat, a $500 campaign donation. Wait!! Didn’t Donald Trump once donate campaign money to Democrats?
And then there is Tommy Tuberville…… the Republican’s candidate for Governor of Alabama. But……..does he qualify to run? Unlike the one-day residency requirement to run for Senate, the Alabama Constitution requires candidates for governor to have lived in the state for the last seven years. Tuberville moved from Auburn when he resigned from his coaching job in 2008. He then moved to Texas and coached at Texas Tech until 2012, and went to the University of Cincinnati, where he lived until 2016. Tommy Tuberville has not lived in the State of Alabama since 2008.
He bought a $5 million compound in the State of Florida. Tuberville has a Florida driver’s license and is registered to vote in Florida. He is now claiming that he “never” left Alabama and has maintained a residence at his wife’s homestead this entire time. It’s the party executive committee’s job to get to the bottom of things, to answer that question, and their answer is to ignore the law, allow Tuberville on the ballot, and throw their middle finger up to the Constitution…again.
Tuberville has one of the most damaging voting records in the Senate. He ran totally on the promise to uphold Donald Trump as president and has made good on that promise. He has refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race against Trump. He single-handedly held up the promotions of our military for months, which placed our country and our service men and women in danger. Tuberville voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Tuberville signed an amicus brief supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its federal protection of abortion. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, Tuberville called it a “victory.” He also voted against the Respect for Marriage Act. He voted against the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022, a bill that provided funding for research and benefits for up to 3.5 million veterans exposed to toxic substances during their service. In February 2023, he co-sponsored a bill to prevent people with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria from serving in the U.S. military, with limited exceptions.
On March 29, 2024, Tuberville accused the Democratic Party of being a “Satanic cult” in response to a tweet by the New York Post about the banning of religious-themed designs from the White House Easter Egg art contest. His comment came at a time of widespread backlash by right-wing to far-right politicians and pundits after Biden publicly acknowledged International Transgender Day of Visibility, which fell on the same date as Easter in 2024.
In January 2025, Tuberville said that transgender children should “live in fear” of their parents as he believed the parents were turning them trans, which Tuberville called “child abuse” and an “absolute disgrace”. LGBTQ Nation refutes these claims, saying that “there is no evidence that a person who is not LGBTQ+ can be turned LGBTQ+ by their parents”
The Alabama Democratic Party has a challenge to Tuberville’s candidacy. The Party Chairman, Randy Kelly, stated that Tuberville’s primary residence has been in Florida during his Senate career, which would place him far outside the required seven years of continuous residence, residency required by the state Constitution to qualify for governor. Kelley further said, “His primary residence is in Florida. Alabama’s Constitution Section 117 clearly states that gubernatorial candidates must be ‘resident citizens of the state at least seven years before the date of their election. Claiming his son’s house as a homestead exemption while all travel receipts, voting, and living take place in Florida simply doesn’t cut it. We intend to challenge his residency in the Courts. If residency is no longer a requirement to run for office in the state of Alabama, that opens the doors for Democrats as well.”
It is no secret that I do not agree with Chairman Kelley on very many things but as a member of the Alabama State Executive Committee and a committed Alabama Democrat, I fully support this challenge. It’s past time to hold the Republicans in Alabama accountable. The corruption in this State is overwhelming. We must do as John Lewis said, “Stand up, speak out, go make good trouble.”