Nearly midway through 2020, the confounding year where surreal events have become expected, the news of Tommy Tuberville’s rise to the cusp of a United States Senate seat registers as perfectly on brand.
Tuberville is the former head coach at Auburn, Ole Miss, Texas Tech and Cincinnati and maintains what one Southern pollster calls the political equivalent of a “two-touchdown favorite” in a Republican primary runoff in Alabama on Tuesday.
Tuberville is running against Jeff Sessions, the former U.S. attorney who served 20 years as a Senator in Alabama. Tuberville’s status as favorite is directly tied to his defiant campaign strategy of attaching himself to President Donald Trump, who has been vilifying Sessions and promoting Tuberville with equal fervor.