Jeff Sessions Set to Enter Race for U.S. Senate in Alabama
Sessions, easily held onto his Senate seat in his two decades in the Senate.
(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Sessions will announce Thursday that he plans to run for the Alabama Senate seat that he vacated in 2017 to became President Donald Trump’s first U.S. attorney general, according to two people familiar with his decision.
Sessions, a former top Republican on the Senate Judiciary and Budget panels, easily held onto his Senate seat in his two decades in the Senate, and his entry scrambles the race to unseat Democratic incumbent Doug Jones.
Jones, a former federal prosecutor, got the seat in a surprise December 2017 special-election win over Republican Roy Moore, a former judge who became mired in allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.
Jones is the only Senate Democrat seen at risk of losing in 2020. Republicans already in the contest include U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne, Secretary of State Jim Merrill, state Representative Arnold Mooney, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, former televangelist Stanley Adair and Moore.
Still, it’s not clear that Sessions would win the Republican nomination, given his strained relationship with Trump, said Jennifer Duffy, Senate editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“Sessions certainly has name ID and a campaign war chest, but it’s not clear that he can clear a primary field,” Duffy said. “He can make a run-off, but can he win one? That depends on what stance Trump takes. It doesn’t appear that Trump and Sessions have mended their fences. As for the general election, Sessions would certainly be the favorite given that it is a presidential year.”
Trump Alliance
Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign, creating an alliance built on shared support for tougher policies on illegal immigration and a wariness of some trade deals they said hurt the working class. He went on to advise Trump on national security and foreign policy during the election, and his long-time aide, Stephen Miller, became a senior policy adviser to the campaign and later in the White House.
Sessions was confirmed as attorney general on a 52-47 vote, after testifying that he wasn’t aware of contacts between members of the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials. But news reports later showed he had been in contact with Russians, and he recused himself from investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
He resigned in November 2018 after months of feuding between him and the president over his recusal.
As attorney general, Sessions adopted a hard line on immigration policy, including taking the position that cities that don’t comply with federal immigration laws should lose federal funding. Trump signed an executive order revoking funding for such cities but it was successfully challenged in federal court. Sessions also supported allowing the Department of Justice to prosecute providers of medical marijuana.
Senate Tenure
In the Senate, as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped lead the fight against both of Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who were both eventually confirmed. He was term-limited out of the job and became the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. He was also a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In the Senate, he took the toughest stance on immigration policy of any GOP senator. In 2010 he spearheaded efforts to defeat a House-passed bill that would have provided a path to legal status for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” who were brought to the U.S. as children. The status of those immigrants has remained in limbo ever since.
A native of Selma, Alabama, he was a private practicing attorney before becoming the U.S. attorney for Alabama in 1981 at the age of 34. In 1986, his bid to become a federal district court judge was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee after Democrats accused Sessions of having made racially insensitive remarks.
Sessions served about six more years as Alabama’s top prosecutor, then was elected state attorney general in 1994 before making his first successful bid for the Senate. When he replaced retiring Democratic Senator Howell Heflin, his victory gave Alabama two GOP-held Senate seats for the first time since Reconstruction.
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton
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