Opinion:
Alabama should elect Doug Jones governor because this state deserves leadership grounded in competence, constitutional responsibility and respect for the people it serves.
Tommy Tuberville offers celebrity and partisan combat. Jones offers a record of serious public service and an agenda focused on health care, affordability and accountable government. Those differences matter more than party labels. They matter because the governor’s office is not a television studio, a football sideline or a stage for the next national controversy. It is a place where judgment has consequences.
The central issue in this election is judgment.
Consider Tuberville’s introduction to national office. Shortly after winning his Senate seat in 2020, he identified the three branches of government as “the House, the Senate, and the executive.” He left out the judiciary and counted the two chambers of Congress as separate branches. In the same interview, he described his father’s service in World War II as a fight to free Europe from socialism, badly mischaracterizing the war against fascism.
Everybody misspeaks. Nobody should be judged by one verbal stumble. But voters are entitled to expect someone seeking high office to understand the government he wants to lead and the history he invokes.
The objection is not that Tuberville sounds unsophisticated. Alabama does not need polished accents or fancy credentials. It needs someone who does the homework. There is nothing elitist about expecting a governor to know basic civics.
When a prominent Alabama official makes elementary mistakes on a national stage, the embarrassment does not remain personal. It becomes another invitation for outsiders to treat our state as a punch line. Alabamians deserve a governor who challenges that condescension through competence—not one who keeps supplying material for it.
More consequential than his verbal blunders was Tuberville’s decision to hold up military promotions during his dispute over Pentagon abortion policy. By September 2023, roughly 300 promotions were stalled, and senior defense officials were accusing him of jeopardizing national security. Whatever voters think about abortion, they should question the judgment of a senator who used military careers and leadership positions as leverage in a political confrontation.
That is not strength. It is a failure to distinguish between taking a position and governing responsibly.
Then there is January 6.
Precision matters here. A telephone conversation with Donald Trump does not establish that Tuberville organized the attack on the Capitol. What the public record does establish is troubling enough without embellishment.
Tuberville said he spoke with Trump during the attack and told him that Vice President Mike Pence had been evacuated from the Senate. “They’ve taken the vice president out,” Tuberville recalled telling the president. “They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.” This was not an event Tuberville understood only through later news coverage. He was there, communicating with the president as the constitutional process came under attack.
Afterward, when senators returned to their work, Tuberville voted to sustain objections to the electoral votes of both Arizona and Pennsylvania. The Senate rejected those objections overwhelmingly: 93–6 on Arizona and 92–7 on Pennsylvania. Tuberville remained among the small minority willing to reject those states’ electoral votes even after the violence.
Those votes were not acts of physical violence. They were, however, acts of constitutional judgment—and profoundly poor ones. At a moment that demanded an unmistakable commitment to the peaceful transfer of power, Tuberville chose to continue challenging the electoral outcome.
Alabama should not shrug that off as ordinary partisan disagreement. Respect for an election cannot depend on whether your preferred candidate wins.
Doug Jones offers a different example of public responsibility.
As a prosecutor, Jones successfully prosecuted Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for their roles in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which killed four young girls. Those convictions came in 2001 and 2002, decades after the crime. That record reflects patient work in pursuit of accountability—not simply a talent for attracting attention.
Jones’s campaign also addresses practical questions facing Alabama families. He supports Medicaid expansion, eliminating the remaining state grocery tax, making child care more affordable and strengthening government transparency. Voters can debate the details and costs of those proposals. But they are proposals about governing: how people obtain medical care, afford necessities and hold public officials accountable.
Jones would face real limits. A Legislature likely to remain Republican would make much of his agenda difficult to enact. Electing him would not magically erase Alabama’s divisions or guarantee every campaign promise. It would put a different kind of leader in the governor’s office—one whose priorities deserve consideration on their merits rather than dismissal by party label.
Republicans do not have to become Democrats to recognize the difference. Conservatives do not have to abandon their principles to demand competence. And Alabama voters do not owe any candidate a promotion simply because he wears the familiar partisan jersey.
This election should not turn on whether Tommy Tuberville can command attention. He has demonstrated that he can. It should turn on whether he has demonstrated the preparation, restraint and constitutional judgment Alabama needs in its governor.
His record gives voters ample reason to say no.
Doug Jones has earned the opportunity to lead. Alabama should elect him governor.
The Birmingham Free Press proudly endorses Doug jones for governor of Alabama.