After weeks of speculation, Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday launched his campaign for Alabama’s governor’s office.
He’ll be heavily favored to win next year’s Republican gubernatorial primary, after other top potential candidates decided to stay out of the race. His decision also opens up a spot in the Senate that is likely to set off a scramble in Alabama politics.
The senator formally announced his decision Tuesday afternoon on “The Will Cain Show,” after launching a “Coach Tuberville for Governor” website.
“A few years ago, I decided to give back to this great country and fight,” Tuberville said during the show. “President Trump was a guy that really was behind me in doing the Senate race. He’s been behind me ever since, and today I will announce that I will be the future governor of the great state of Alabama.”
Tuberville joins a growing pool of senators either eyeing or already running for seats back home rather than staying in an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. The former football coach has not yet even completed his first term in the Senate.
His highly anticipated announcement comes after months of speculation about whether Tuberville would take this next step in politics. In April, Semafor reported that he started telling his colleagues in the Senate that he was planning to run for governor. Yellowhammer News also reported that Tuberville told donors at a private event that he had made his decision to leave the Senate.
Rick Pate, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, told NOTUS that he spoke with Tuberville in the lead-up to the announcement, and said he believes that Tuberville has been an “effective” senator, but he understands Tuberville’s decision to leave the role.
“I can understand his point,” Pate said in an interview in early May. “He’s tired of being in Washington. … So, everybody has to do what they want to do.”
Ahead of his announcement, Joan Reynolds, vice chair of the Alabama Republican Party, told NOTUS that while the state party doesn’t pick sides in a primary, she believes that Tuberville “would do equally as well for the state as he’s done in the Senate.”
One possible hurdle Tuberville will face is the state’s residency requirement. Alabama’s constitution says that anyone who wants to run for governor must “have been citizens of the United States ten years and resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”
Tuberville lived in the state from 1999 through 2008, when he was the head football coach at Auburn University, but moved away afterward before returning to the state in 2018. He announced his Senate campaign in 2019. He currently owns at least two properties in Florida and at least two in Alabama. He has argued that the state’s constitution doesn’t require that the years must be directly before the election year.
“I think he would be considered a heavy favorite,” Terry Lathan, former Alabama Republican Party chair, told NOTUS. “Everyone in the state knows who he is. He could raise money. He’s got a very high name ID, and he’s been very strong on conservative issues.”
But primary voters are the ones he’ll need to win over. A poll by J.L. Partners taken in late April showed that 71% of Republican primary voters believe that he should stay in the Senate.
Alabama Republicans believed that Tuberville’s toughest competition for governor could be Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth. However, after initially expressing interest in the position, Ainsworth decided to sit it out.
“After much prayer and many discussions with my family, friends, and supporters, I will not be a candidate for governor during the 2026 election cycle,” Ainsworth said in a statement posted on social media. Taking a job in the private sector, he said, “makes the most sense for all of us at this time in our lives.”
All signs now seem to be pointing towards Tuberville as the clear Republican nominee in the governor’s election.
—
Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.