Jeff Sessions Jumps Into Race to Reclaim Alabama Senate Seat
It’s not clear that Sessions would win the GOP nomination, given his strained relationship with Trump.
(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Sessions said he’ll run for the Alabama Senate seat that he vacated in 2017 to became President Donald Trump’s first U.S. attorney general, a return to politics that could be challenging given his tumultuous relationship with the president.
Sessions, 72, a former top Republican on the Senate Judiciary and Budget panels, easily held onto his seat for two decades, and his entry shakes up the race to defeat Democratic incumbent Doug Jones.
He announced his candidacy Thursday night in a video and statement on his campaign’s website, and said he remains a strong Trump supporter despite “our ups and downs.”
“When I left President Trump’s cabinet,” Sessions said as music played at a fast tempo in the background, “did I write a tell-all book? No. Did I go on CNN and attack the president? Nope. Have I said a cross word about our president? Not one time.
“And I’ll tell you why: First, that would be dishonorable. I was there to serve his agenda, not mine. Second, the president is doing a great job for America and Alabama, and he has my strong support.”
Jones, a former federal prosecutor, won a surprise December 2017 special election in the reliably Republican state over GOP candidate Roy Moore, a former Alabama chief justice who became mired in allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denied.
Jones is the Senate Democrat most seen at risk of losing in 2020. Trump won the state with 62% of the vote. Republicans already in the contest include U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne, Secretary of State John Merrill, state Representative Arnold Mooney, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, former televangelist Stanley Adair -- and Moore.
It’s not clear that Sessions would win the GOP nomination, given his strained relationship with Trump, according to Jennifer Duffy, Senate editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. He resigned last November after months of complaints and insults from the president over his recusal from the inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“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, who publicly spoke and tweeted about his irritation with Sessions in the months leading up to his forced departure from the Justice Department, wouldn’t commit to endorsing him early Friday.
”Well, I haven’t gotten involved,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I saw he said very nice things about me last night, but we’ll have to see.”
Asked whether he has forgiven Sessions for his recusal, he simply responded, “I don’t even think about it.”
After Special Counsel Robert Mueller began his investigation, Trump publicly called on Sessions to halt it, an extraordinary break from traditional boundaries between presidents and law enforcement. He also said that he never would have nominated Sessions as attorney general if he knew he would recuse himself.
Sessions stood by his recusal decision in an interview Thursday evening with Tucker Carlson on Fox News. “I know how painful it was for the president,” he said. “The whole thing was very painful for him and he saw this as a pivotal moment”
Asked if Trump would back his candidacy, Sessions said, “I think he will respect my work. I was there for the Trump agenda every day I was in the Senate, no doubt about it. I was the first senator to endorse him. We pushed his immigration agenda, his trade agenda and began to to work for a more realistic foreign policy that doesn’t get us into endless wars. I think right about all three of those.”
He added that he hasn’t spoken to the president.
The state’s other senator, Republican Richard Shelby, said he’ll endorse Sessions and that his former colleague has his own pull with voters in the state even if Trump lashes out.
“He has run before, he is very popular,” Shelby said.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Sessions and Trump created an alliance built on support for tougher policies on illegal immigration and a wariness of some trade deals that they said hurt the working class. The senator also advised the candidate on national security and foreign policy, 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 the broader investigations into Russian 2016 election meddling.
As attorney general, Sessions adopted a hard line on immigration policy, including implementing a “zero tolerance” policy at the southern U.S. border that led to family separations. He also took 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 Justice Department to prosecute providers of medical marijuana.
Senate Career
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.
He took the toughest immigration stance 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, Sessions was a lawyer in private practice 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 him 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 Republican Senate seats for the first time since Reconstruction.
--With assistance from James Rowley and Josh Wingrove.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, John Harney
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