Morning Digest: Does Tommy Tuberville really live in Alabama?
A new suit says he's a Florida Man—which could derail his bid for governor
Leading Off
AL-Gov
Two Alabama voters have filed a lawsuit in state court challenging Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor, arguing that he hasn’t lived in the state long enough to qualify as a candidate.
Under the state Constitution, anyone seeking the offices of governor or lieutenant governor must be an Alabama resident for seven years by Election Day. All but four states have a similar requirement, according to Ballotpedia, ranging from as little as 30 days (Rhode Island) to 10 years (Missouri and Oklahoma).
Before running for office, Tuberville was widely known for his winning tenure as the head football coach at Auburn University, where he led the school to six consecutive victories over archrival Alabama.
But after leaving Auburn following his first-ever losing season in 2008, he never met with the same success elsewhere. He last coached for the University of Cincinnati, resigning amid speculation that he was on the verge of being fired after compiling a 4-8 record in 2016.
In their complaint, the Alabama voters archly note, “As many new retirees do, Tuberville promptly moved to Florida” following his departure from Cincinnati. They ask the court to bar Tuberville from the ballot because he continued to reside in Florida after Nov. 3, 2019, when the seven-year period would have begun.
The challengers say that, among other things, Tuberville maintained his Florida driver’s license until 2023; his campaign spent heavily on expenses in the area around his home in the Florida Panhandle community of Santa Rosa Beach; and he and his wife “listed their Florida home as their primary residence on legal documents associated with the purchase of a piece of property.”
They also cite unguarded comments by Tuberville himself.
“Yes, I am not a everyday resident of Alabama,” he told a local Republican group while on the campaign trail in August of 2019. “That’s gonna be brought up. I’ve been here most of the last 20 years. Have property. So you’ll see that on TV. ‘He’s a carpetbagger.’ Yes, I’m a carpetbagger of this country.”
And just two months ago, in an interview with the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, Tuberville said, “I go back to Auburn, three or four ballgames a year” before adding, “Actually, I live in Auburn, but live mostly in D.C. during the week.”
A previous legal challenge to Tuberville’s residency filed by a rival for the GOP nomination, insurance agent Ken McFeeters, was dismissed without any explanation by a different state court last month. The state Republican Party also rejected a complaint by McFeeters following a hearing on Sunday.
The voters bringing the newest lawsuit, though, charge that the hearing “was essentially a show trial with a foregone finding in Tuberville’s favor.”
Tuberville demolished McFeeters by an 85-10 margin in Tuesday’s primary. If he stays on the ballot, he’ll face former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November as the two vie to succeed term-limited GOP incumbent Kay Ivey.
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Governors
ME-Gov
Former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree and attorney Bobby Charles each learned early Friday that they’d respectively secured the Democratic and Republican nominations for governor of Maine.
Election officials announced their wins around 1:45 AM after running ranked-choice tabulations from the busy June 9 primaries. Pingree had trailed Nirav Shah, the state’s former health director, among first-choice preferences, but she won after the ranked-choice process was complete. Charles, for his part, maintained his lead from the first round.
Pingree and Charles will face state Sen. Rick Bennett, a longtime Republican who dropped his party affiliation last year to run as an independent, in the general election to replace termed-out Gov. Janet Mills, who supported Pingree in the primary.
Ranked-choice voting will not be used in the general election for governor or the legislature, though it will be employed again this fall in U.S. Senate and House races.
House
CA-14
The Associated Press projected Thursday that state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, the president of the board for Bay Area Rapid Transit, will face off in an all-Democratic special election runoff on Aug. 18 ahead of their showdown in November for a full term.
Wahab leads 43-17 with most of the votes counted from the first round of the special on Tuesday. Wahab posted a smaller, though still substantial, 38-17 advantage over Hernandez in the top-two primary for a full term that took place earlier this month.
Whoever wins this summer will replace Democrat Eric Swalwell, who resigned in disgrace in April, in California’s 14th District, a safely blue constituency based in the East Bay.
ME-02
State Auditor Matt Dunlap will be the Democratic nominee against former Gov. Paul LePage, who had no opposition in last week’s Republican primary, in Maine’s open 2nd District.
Dunlap pulled ahead of state Sen. Joe Baldacci, the favorite candidate of national Democrats, after election officials performed ranked-choice tabulations from last week’s primary. Dunlap will now try to replace Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who is not seeking reelection to a constituency Donald Trump carried 54-44 in 2024.
NJ-07
A spokesperson for Republican Rep. Tom Kean, who vanished from view in early March, tells the New Jersey Globe that the missing congressman will finally return to Congress on June 30 but offered no information about where he’s been or why he’s been absent so long.
Kean’s staffers have repeatedly told reporters that their boss would be back at work “soon,” going back to March 20, when the Globe first broke the story of his disappearance.
“The congressman is addressing a personal health matter,” a Kean aide told the outlet at the time. “He will be returning to a full regular schedule soon.”
Kean cast his last vote in the House on March 5, meaning that even if he sticks to this timetable—the first his office has ever offered—he’ll have been underground for nearly four months, a stretch that included his own primary in New Jersey’s 7th District.
UT-02, UT-03
Donald Trump endorsed Reps. Blake Moore and Celeste Maloy on Wednesday evening, a move that comes less than a week before the two Republicans face far-right challengers in Tuesday’s primaries—the first to be held under Utah’s new court-imposed map.
Moore’s opponent in the revamped 2nd District is state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, who has highlighted the congressman’s role in passing the 2018 ballot measure that cracked down on partisan gerrymandering. That plan eventually resulted in the new map that transformed Moore’s old 1st District into a Democratic-friendly constituency and spurred him to run for the conservative 2nd instead.
The congressman, though, enjoys a huge financial advantage over Lisonbee. The only recent poll, a mid-May internal from Moore, also found him easily ahead 63-29.
Maloy, likewise, is trying to get past former state Rep. Phil Lyman, who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Spencer Cox in 2024 both in the primary and then as a write-in candidate in the general, in the new 3rd. Maloy barely survived her primary two years ago, but Lyman has raised almost nothing for his new effort.
Mayors & County Leaders
Washington, D.C. Mayor
Councilmember Janeese Lewis George secured the Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington, D.C., on Thursday when former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, her main intraparty rival, conceded. Lewis George, a self-described democratic socialist, is now all but assured to become the new leader of the nation’s capital, a longtime Democratic stronghold.
Lewis George enjoys a wide 53-36 lead over McDuffie as of Friday morning in the primary for the post that Mayor Muriel Bowser, a McDuffie ally, is not seeking reelection to. While the Associated Press estimates that only about three-quarters of the vote has been tabulated in this contest, the outlet also called the race for Lewis George hours after McDuffie conceded.
The district is using ranked-choice voting for the first time this year, but if George remains above 50%, such tabulations won’t be necessary. And even if later-counted votes knock her below a majority, she’s still likely to prevail.
Poll Pile
MI-Sen: Zenith Research for Common Defense (pro-Abdul El-Sayed):
Abdul El-Sayed (D): 45, Mike Rogers (R): 42.
Mallory McMorrow (D): 44, Rogers (R): 42.
Haley Stevens (D): 43, Rogers (R): 42.
MN-Sen (D): SurveyUSA for KSTP:
Angie Craig: 41, Peggy Flanagan: 36.
MN-Sen (R): SurveyUSA:
Michele Tafoya: 36, Royce White: 15, Adam Schwarze: 7, Tom Weiler: 7.
MT-Sen: Public Opinion Strategies for The Political Company:
Kurt Alme (R): 44, Alani Bankhead (D): 25, Seth Bodnar (I): 20, Kyle Austin (L): 4.
AZ-Gov (R): NextGen Polling:
Andy Biggs: 57, David Schweikert: 11.
April: 52-10 Biggs.
CA-Gov: Kreate Strategies:
Xavier Becerra (D): 58, Steve Hilton (R): 33.
MN-Gov (R): SurveyUSA:
Mike Lindell: 27, Lisa Demuth: 22, Kendall Qualls: 17.
PA-Gov: Franklin & Marshall College:
Josh Shapiro (D-inc): 50, Stacy Garrity (R): 28.
March: 48-28 Shapiro.
CO-08 (D): GBAO for Latino Victory Fund (pro-Manny Rutinel):
Manny Rutinel: 44, Shannon Bird: 31.
Unreleased April poll: 32-31 Bird.
AZ-AG (R): NextGen:
Warren Peterson: 26, Rodney Glassman: 20, undecided: 55.
MN-AG: SurveyUSA:
Keith Ellison (D-inc): 44, Ron Schutz (R): 37.
AZ-SoS (R): NextGen:
Alex Kolodin: 16, Gina Swoboda: 11, undecided: 73.
Editor’s Note: In our last Digest, we incorrectly swapped Virginia’s 1st and 2nd congressional districts in our House Majority PAC item. The 1st District is in the Richmond media market while the 2nd District is in the Norfolk media market, not the reverse.