Jeff Sessions Fights for His Political Life Amid Crowded Field in Republican Primary for U.S. Senate
Shane Trejo
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Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is hoping to get his U.S. Senate seat back and is fighting against a crowded field to be the Republican nominee to oppose incumbent Democrat Doug Jones in November.
Sessions is running as a Trump loyalist, eschewing his complicated past with the President while noting that he has never said a bad word about the man after leaving the administration.
“I’ll have a better relationship. I know what he campaigned on. I was with him at those rallies. I saw how people reacted to his strength and his vigor. I do think he’ll win again,” Sessions said of Trump on Tuesday morning.
The primary battle concludes today, and Sessions is going up against former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, Rep. Arnold Mooney, activist Ruth Page Nelson, and businessman Stanley Adair.
While Sessions has refused to say anything against President Trump, the President has criticized Sessions immensely for recusing himself as Attorney General during the Russian collusion investigation.
“You look at what’s happening over at the Justice Department, now we have a great attorney general. Whereas before that, with Jeff Sessions, it was a disaster. Just a total disaster. He was an embarrassment to the great state of Alabama,” Trump said last year.
“And I put him there because he endorsed me, and he wanted it so badly. And I wish he’d never endorsed me,” he added.
“The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself…I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined…and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!” Trump wrote in a tweet back in June 2018 when Sessions was still the AG.
Regardless of Trump’s displeasure with Sessions’ performance as AG, Sessions has continued to praise his former boss for “relentlessly and actually honoring the promises he made to the American people.”
“That’s why I still do support him,” he said.
Despite their differences, Trump has largely stayed out of the U.S. Senate race. He even posted a poll in January that showed Sessions leading the pack, indicating that the two men may be close to mending fences.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1220452007389155328
“President Trump loves Alabama — and Alabama loves our president. Alabama gave President Trump one of his biggest margins of victory in 2016, and as this and other polls have shown, Republican voters in Alabama solidly back Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate race,” said Sessions campaign manager Jon Jones.
“It’s easy for politicians to talk big now, but when the chips were down in 2016, Senator Jeff Sessions was President Trump’s strongest ally. Jeff Sessions is the conservative fighter Alabama needs in Washington, helping to advance the Trump agenda in the U.S. Senate,” Jones added.
Sessions’ political future will be determined on Tuesday based on whether the people of Alabama choose his proven record or prefer somebody new to challenge the incumbent Democrat in November.
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