U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) told the Business Council of Alabama’s Governmental Affairs Conference on Friday that his office was voted the best staff in the U.S. Senate by its peers — and that nearly all of those staffers are Alabamians planning to come home.
“Coming back from last week — and I like to brag on this — we have all these staffs, the 100 senators, and they vote. They vote on the best staff in the United States Senate. We won best staff in the United States Senate,” Tuberville told former U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, who moderated the conversation at the Grand Hotel just hours after the senator finished votes in Washington at 4:30 a.m. and boarded a plane south.
Then came the part that should matter most to Alabamians sizing up a would-be Tuberville administration: “99% of them are from this state, and 85% of them, close to 90, are coming back to this state. They’re young, they’re energetic, they know what they’re doing. They’ve worked in every field up there.”
Tuberville’s office has earned top marks from anonymous staff reviewers before — a rare distinction in a Capitol better known for burnout than loyalty.
The face of that operation is Jordan Doufexis, the Rainsville native whose ascension from DeKalb County to Capitol Hill has made him one of the most consequential Alabamians in Washington.
Doufexis also serves as chairman of Tuberville’s gubernatorial campaign and is widely expected to hold the seniormost staff role in a Tuberville administration.
“It’s fun to watch these young people thrive and enjoy what they’re doing,” Tuberville said. “They work hard at it, and they made a huge difference in helping me come along, not knowing anything about politics six years ago.”
If the roster is one half of Tuberville’s preparation, the scouting report is the other. The coach revealed Friday that he has spent the last year and a half quietly studying the operation he hopes to inherit — with the full cooperation of the administration running it.
“We’ve worked with all her people, talked with them over the last year and a half since we announced that we were going to run for this position. We’ve been interviewing and talking to all the people in her cabinet. They would come to D.C.; we would meet with them in Alabama — just picking their brains about what’s going on, what’s good, what’s bad,” he said. “We’re not going to walk in not knowing what’s going on.”
It was a mutual show of respect between Alabama’s current chief executive and the man hoping to succeed her. “Governor Ivey did that, and she did it very well,” Tuberville said of her knack for putting the right people in the right seats — adding, unprompted, that the governor “has done a great job, and she’s a great person.”
For Tuberville, the whole exercise comes back to first principles learned over four decades of building football programs.
“When you’re running any kind of business, a football team, or running a state — doing anything where you work with people — you have to understand you can’t do all this work yourself. Your job is to make sure you’ve got good people in those positions,” he said.
And there’s a litmus test: “You’ve got to hire people that, number one, know what they’re doing, and number two, enjoy what they’re doing. If you don’t enjoy it, you don’t need to be in the business. You don’t enjoy coaching? Get out of it. You don’t enjoy politics? You’d better get out of it, because it wears you down.”
Tuberville also addressed his decision to announce his transition operation – the “Golden Age Action Team” – months ahead of the election.
“Normally you don’t release the transition team until you win — we released the transition team for one reason: everybody on that transition team is totally different. They’ve never been in politics … but they’re big players in this state,” he said. “I want to get more people involved that can become more of a benefit in economics. There’s a lot of talent in this state, a lot of good people. … We have to get the best and the brightest.”
Asked by Bonner how he wants Alabamians to remember his single Senate term, Tuberville pointed right back at the people he brought with him — and why they all signed up.
“I didn’t go up there to be a senator. They all called me Coach. I ran because I want to help people, and that’s what this is all about.”
