Earlier on Friday, former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville’s U.S. Senate campaign hit former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his opponent in the March 31 U.S. Senatorial Republican primary runoff, for having fallen out of favor with President Donald Trump.
Shortly thereafter, the Sessions campaign returned fire with its own advertisement questioning Tuberville’s connection to Alabama given his recent residency in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla.
The back-and-forth between the two campaigns comes immediately after Tuesday night’s primary, which Tuberville eeked out a 12,000-vote edge, roughly 2% out of 716,299 ballots cast.
Transcript as follows:
ANNOUNCER: Big announcement by Tommy Tuberville.
TUBERVILLE: After 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and the blue water – what a great place to live.
ANNOUNCER: Florida?
TUBERVILLE: Santa Rosa Beach, Florida….
ANNOUNCER: Not Alabama?
TUBERVILLE: I’m gonna be the next U.S. Senator from the state of Alabama.
ANNOUNCER: What? No you’re not. Tuberville’s a phony. He’s not from Alabama. He lives and votes in Florida. When this campaign is over, he’ll go back to Florida.
JEFF SESSIONS: I’m Jeff Sessions and I approve this ad.
A release that accompanied the release of the ad accuses Tuberville of living, paying taxes and voting in the Sunshine State.
“Alabama will not give away our voice in the U.S. Senate to a person who grew up in Arkansas, retired in Florida, and merely stopped here for a few years. In fact, just last year, he admitted ‘Yes, I am not an everyday resident of Alabama.’ Further, he flatly stated twice, ‘I am a carpetbagger.’ Those are his words,” Sessions campaign manager Jon Jones said in the release. “Florida Phony Tommy Tuberville is an out-of-state, out-of-work football coach who doesn’t know or understand Alabama, or the issues Alabamians care about. Let’s be honest – Tommy Tuberville is a big talking phony. He is playing a character on TV, but that’s not who he is. He’s the guy who said he would only leave Ole Miss in a pine box.”
“Tommy Tuberville always puts himself first,” he continued. “He gets fired from or quits every job. In the first 65 years of his life, Tuberville never lifted a finger in the battle for conservative ideals. He never helped President Trump, he never said a kind word about President Trump, he never even gave a single penny of his millions to help President Trump get elected. But now that he wants our vote, he is all about Trump. How convenient. Tommy Tuberville is a Florida Phony who is all about himself and he is just using President Trump for his own purposes.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.