Congressman Bradley Byrne and family at Wintzell’s: Facebook
By Glynn Wilson –
MOBILE, Ala. — In a room full of mostly white males in business suits at Wintzell’s Oyster House downtown on Dauphin Street Wednesday night, Republican Congressman Bradley Byrne officially announced he will run for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Doug Jones in 2020. The primary vote will take place on March 3, just a little over a year from now.
In off the cuff remarks and no prepared speech, Byrne took to the podium in a blue shirt and no tie, blue jeans and cowboy boots and made it clear that he will run a campaign emphasizing culture war issues, God, guns, abortion and standing up for what he called “Alabama values.”
“We can’t let them take our guns away from us,” he said, even though there’s no proposal from anyone in Washington to take anybody’s guns, and his opponent, Doug Jones, is also a deer and bird hunter who is pro-Second Amendment.
Byrne indicated he is for Trump’s controversial pick for the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh and other nominees like him, and is clearly for building Trump’s controversial border wall, he said.
Apparently his plan is going to be to try to convince Alabama voters that he’s running as an outsider against the Washington swamp, even though the Republican Party controls the White House, holds a majority in the Senate and on the Supreme Court.
When asked if he’s talked to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and whether Sessions might run too to take back his old seat in the Senate, Byrne said he had received advice from Sessions about running. But he would not say whether Sessions might run or reveal the substance of the advice.
Senator Doug Jones Responds
U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones rides with organized labor in the Veterans Day Parade in Mobile, Alabama, Friday Nov. 10, 2017: Photo by Glynn Wilson
When I asked if he had any comments on Byrne’s announcement, Senator Doug Jones issued a statement via email.
“Given the results of his losing bid for Governor in 2010, in which he did not even win the Republican nomination, it’s hard to see why they (Republicans) would nominate a career politician like Bradley Byrne now,” Jones said. “He has been part of the problem in Washington for years.”
While other news outlets are reporting that the Republican primary is expected to draw a number of candidates to run against him, the Jones campaign said it doesn’t matter if it’s “1 opponent or 100.”
“His focus is working for the people of Alabama whether it’s protecting our auto jobs and farmers against dangerous tariffs or building health care infrastructure in Alabama’s rural communities,” campaign spokesman Doug Turner said. “While some are focused only on the politics, and the politics of division in particular, Senator Jones is focused on finding common ground and getting things done for the people of Alabama.”
Byrne indicated he expected the campaign to be the most expensive in Alabama history, and he was ready for personal attacks and negative campaign ads, even though Doug Jones never ran negative campaign ads even against former judge Roy Moore who he defeated in the special election in 2017.
Doug Jones Wins Historic Senate Election Over Defiant Judge Roy Moore
Byrne mentioned negative ads when he ran for governor in 2010, but those ads were authorized and paid for by Paul Hubbert of the Alabama Education Association and called Byrne “too liberal for Alabama,” mimicking many Republican ads over the course of the past three decades from Republican candidates running against Democrats.
In response to questions from a Fox 10 News reporter, Byrne admitted that Montgomery has been “a swamp,” with a lot of Republicans removed from office and sent to prison.
But again he said, “We need somebody to go to Washington and fight for Alabama values. We’re not going to be a socialist country. We’re not going to kill babies that are being delivered. We’re not going to take your guns away from you. We’re not going to take your health care away from you.”
On that last line, he choked a little bit, since it has been President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress who have fought to gut the Affordable Care Act since President Barack Obama got it passed in a bipartisan Congress in 2010.
See the live video of the event on the Mobile CBS affiliate station WKRG News 5’s website.
Having been raised here, let me tell those who don’t know what “Alabama values” are. During Sunday School (the early 1950s) we were taught how “the blacks” were an inferior race not really liked by “god.” We were taught that Communism and integration are along the same mode of thought. Republicans, then, were people that should be avoided and Lincoln was a horrible, traitorous president-then after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 OVERNIGHT the Democrats became “the party of (“the blacks”)” and being a Republican was somehow “Christian” and “virtuous.” For those that did not actually live through this-hard to believe. What is even harder to believe is that we still seem to be in that era!