Will Doug Jones pull off another Alabama miracle in 2026?

Will Doug Jones pull off another Alabama miracle in 2026?
The former senator announced his candidacy for governor — against Tommy Tuberville

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published December 16, 2025 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) Come November 2026, Alabama voters could see two familiar names on the ballot for governor. On Dec. 13, former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones announced his candidacy, joining current GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who defeated him in his 2020 reelection bid by 20 points. (Both candidates have primary elections in May.)

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.

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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 Sept. 15, 1963 — Jones had an excellent reputation in the state as a former U.S. attorney. Unfortunately, because the special election was only to serve out the remainder of Sessions’ term, Jones had to run again in 2020 and was beaten by former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, a man who said during his campaign that the three branches of government are “the House, the Senate and the executive.”

Since then, Tuberville has been a train wreck in the Senate. He has continued to display an astonishing ignorance about civic life, such as when he suggested postponing Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, apparently unaware that the Constitution sets the date as Jan. 20. But Tuberville has also become infamous for a series of racist gaffes, which have been beyond the pale even for MAGA politicians. In October 2022, he compared the descendants of enslaved people to criminals. The following year, he claimed that white nationals are unfairly labeled as racist. (He later attempted to walk back his comments.) At a Trump rally in 2024, he said that Democrats “want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/16/will-doug-jones-pull-off-another-alabama-miracle-in-2026/