With a Supreme Court confirmation fight looming in the throes of a presidential election cycle, former Gov. Robert Bentley argues it did not have to be this difficult for Republicans to get President Donald Trump’s picks confirmed.
Bentley spoke about the decision by his successor, Gov. Kay Ivey, to hold a special election for the U.S. Senate seat he appointed then-Attorney General Luther Strange to fill the after Jeff Sessions resigned the seat to take the U.S. Attorney General post under President Donald Trump.
Bentley made mention of that 2017 special election, in which Democratic Party nominee Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore to give Democrats an additional vote for Republicans to overcome in the U.S. Senate, during an interview with Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5 on Friday. He argued had the election been held in 2018, the outcome would have been in favor of a Republican.
“I will say this — in the state, obviously we have our political issues,” Bentley said. “Right now, we have a Senate race and I will say this — I think 2017, I think the mistake that was made was the moving of the election because the moving of the election elected a Democrat senator. That has hurt us on the Republican side — it has hurt us nationally because we have had to worry about whether or not we have had enough Republicans dealing with Kavanaugh, and now dealing with the next one that will be appointed as far as the Supreme Court.”
Bentley said he was not surprised about the pushback at the time, but explained there were reasons to justify waiting to have held the election in 2018.
“The reason we put it in 2018 was for three reasons,” he said. “Number one was it was going to cost the state $16 million for the election, which it did. Number two was we had some federal laws related to our overseas people that we might have gone against those and so we wanted to make sure we gave it long enough to make sure we could get ballots to the overseas people. But the main reason we put it off is because we knew a special election would draw 15% of the population, and that was the best chance for a Democrat to win. And that is exactly what happened.”
The former governor, who has resumed practicing dermatology in his hometown of Tuscaloosa, acknowledged Strange’s shortcomings. However, he said had the election been held in 2018 instead of 2017, it would have given potential Republican challengers an opportunity to prepare and perhaps have given the GOP better prospects.
“In a general election, it would not have happened before,” Bentley said. “If we had waited until 2018, then Republicans who wanted to run against Luther Strange — they could have gotten their campaigns ready. They could have raised money. There was not a single person at that time that said they were going to run except Luther Strange. But, you know, they would have had time to get everything ready to run, and we would have had some good candidates, I think, to run against Luther Strange in 2018.”
“I think he had positives, and I think he had negatives because honestly, he was not necessarily a real good campaigner,” he said. “He had had trouble in past elections. He was qualified. He was the only one who said he was going to run, and he was qualified. But I think there were other candidates that would have done well. I think they would have used the fact that he had been appointed against him, just like they did. I think a Republican would have won that race in 2018.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
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