Just before Labor Day weekend, bombs started dropping in the 2026 race for Alabama Attorney General. 

In a campaign announcement this morning, Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell publicly called out opponent Katherine Robertson for accepting a $150,000 campaign contribution from a familiar name in Alabama politics: Hugh F. Culverhouse, Jr. 

“This is the same Hugh Culverhouse Jr. who paid for an abortion clinic in Birmingham and tried to use his money to bully Alabama into abandoning its pro-life principles,” Justice Jay Mitchell said. 

“Now he’s trying to buy influence in the Attorney General’s office? That should raise flags for every pro-life voter in Alabama,” Mitchell warned. 

Shortly after, Katherine Robertson, also a Republican candidate and longtime chief counsel to current Attorney General Steve Marshall, who has endorsed Robertson, fired off an explosive response, claiming hypocrisy, and lambasting one of his donor relationships as well.

By Friday afternoon, it turned into a direct and heated back-and-forth between the two candidates on social media.

The 2026 AG’s race is off to a big-money start, and fundraising has been the primary focus of its public attention.

Last month, Mitchell drew a comparison between his in-state fundraising and what his campaign called “out-of-state dark money.”

In her first fundraising report, Robertson received a $1 million contribution from a newly-formed Nashville-based nonprofit, First Principles Action, which benefitted from some additional clarity in a statement from Robertson on Friday.

Mitchell’s attack on Culverhouse’s donation to Robertson stems from an intense controversy that first began in 2019.

Culverhouse, a Florida-based real estate investor, turned a record pledge into PR poison in 2019 when the University of Alabama Board of Trustees voted to return a record $26.5 million gift and remove his name from the law school.

Culverhouse urged students to boycott the university over the state’s abortion law and said Alabama was reinforcing its reputation as “the land of the backward,” full of “hicks.”

University officials said the decision was about stopping donor interference – not politics.

In 2019, it was revealed that Culverhouse demanded special sway over UA Law, pressing on admissions, scholarships, hiring and even the dean’s job, before attempting to spin the fall-out as payback for his public opposition to Alabama’s abortion ban. 

Internal emails released by the UA System disproved that claim with proof that officials moved to return his gift before his abortion remarks and documenting his suggestion to create a “cover story.” 

Shortly after, Culverhouse re-invested a portion of the returned gift – $250,000 – to Planned Parenthood in order to build an abortion clinic in Birmingham. 

Culverhouse is on record extensively as a vocal proponent of abortion.

“Saudi Arabia is more liberal in granting abortions than Alabama,” Culverhouse told Florida Politics in 2019.

Roughly an hour after Mitchell’s campaign dispatched an attack on the Culverhouse donation, Robertson’s campaign fired back some critiques of their own.

“Mitchell’s latest attempt to mislead voters comes as no surprise. After lying to the people of Alabama in his campaign for the Supreme Court, only to quit weeks into the job,” Annabel Martinson, campaign manager and spokeswomen for Robertson said in a statement to press.

“Not only has Jay Mitchell misled voters and donors in Alabama by raising money for one race and using it for another, he’s actively soliciting and accepting contributions from woke anti-Trump Chicago trial lawyers who have a long history of bankrolling radical liberals such as Kamala Harris, Rashida Talib, and Elizabeth Warren.”

Robertson’s campaign also recast Culverhouse’s political profile as “a Trump mega-donor” who has backed high-profile conservatives. Culverhouse donated $500,000 to Donald Trump’s campaign in June 2024.

Further, the campaign claimed Mitchell “closed IVF clinics,” referring to his majority opinion in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine,  holding that frozen embryos are “children” under Alabama’s wrongful-death law. Providers temporarily paused IVF services after the ruling until the Legislature and Governor Kay Ivey enacted immunity protections the following month.

Robertson’s campaign accused Mitchell of “spending 18 months campaigning for the Supreme Court under false pretenses” before resigning in May to run for attorney general, a barb she first used last month in response to “dark money” claims.

Relevant to that $1 million contribution, in her response on Friday, Robertson acknowledges a connection between First Principles Action, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Leonard Leo – the Federalist Society power broker whose network helped seat the justices who overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022. 

Robertson’s campaign cited a New York Magazine account that credits Leo’s coalition with engineering the victory. 

By Friday afternoon, the war that was initially being waged in the media unfolded publicly — and directly.

Robertson’s X account posted an image of Mitchell’s initial attack and a copy of her own press release:

“So…the biggest pro-life donor IN THE COUNTRY goes all in for me, but he criticizes that as ‘anti-Trump.’ Then one of Trump’s biggest donors gives big to me, and that’s ‘anti-pro-life,’” Robertson posted.

“An interesting take from someone who took $$$ from a Chicago trial firm that backed Kamala,” she wrote. “This is going to be fun.”

Mitchell’s campaign account fired back directly at Robertson’s with a 2019 news report of Culverhouse’s donation to Planned Parenthood.

“We know from experience that this guy does not give without strings attached,” Mitchell responded, referencing Culverhouse. “He’s tried before, and he’s trying again to buy the culture of our state and make it as woke as he is.”

The Republican Party primary election for Alabama Attorney General will be on the ballot May 19, 2026.

Still more than 250 days out from election day, the race is proving to be a prize fight.