Although dominated by Republicans, Texas is far from the reddest of the red states. Donald Trump carried Texas by roughly 14 percent in 2024; he carried Alabama by 30 percent.
Democrats struggle badly in statewide races in Texas; they struggle even more in Alabama. Yet in 2017, centrist Democrat Doug Jones defeated Judge Roy Moore, the GOP nominee, in a special election to replace conservative ex-Sen. Jeff Sessions — who left the U.S. Senate to become President Donald Trump's first appointee for U.S. attorney general.
Jones was voted out of office in 2020, losing to now-Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) by 20 percent. But Jones, according to Salon's Heather Digby Parton, is gearing up for another statewide race in Alabama
In an article published on December 16, Parton reports, "With President Donald Trump and the GOP's declining poll numbers, the stage appears to have been set for Democratic wins in the 2026 midterms — and possibly including surprise victories like the one that took Jones to the Senate in 2017 and foreshadowed a big blue wave the following year."
When Jones defeated Moore, however, many political strategists described his victory as a fluke and argued that he had the advantage of being up against a very bad candidate.
"In 2017, it was quite a revelation that Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court whose claim to fame was an insistence on displaying the Ten Commandments in and outside public buildings, allegedly had a long history of coercing girls and young women into tawdry sexual situations," Parton explains. "Although he had been under clouds of corruption for some years and was highly controversial, this came as a shock to the Alabama electorate — and it opened the door for Jones to be the first Democrat elected statewide in nearly two decades."
Parton adds, "Best known as the man who prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members responsible for one of the most notorious events in the Civil Rights Movement — the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four Black girls on September 15, 1963 — Jones had an excellent reputation in the state as a former U.S. attorney."
If they become their parties' nominees, Jones and Tuberville may have a rematch in 2026 — although this time, competing in a gubernatorial race rather than a U.S. Senate race.
"Republicans are confident that Tuberville will win the governorship — even though he apparently doesn't live in Alabama — and don't see Jones as any real competition," Parton observes. "Jones, however, clearly believes that conditions have changed dramatically since 2020 and that Tuberville now has a record he will have to defend — unlike five years ago, when he was just a good-old boy-football coach. That record includes acting as Donald Trump's rubber stamp and embarrassing the state with his ignorance.
Read Heather Digby Parton's full Salon article at this link.
