Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a Republican and former Auburn University football coach, will run for governor of the state in the 2026 election, he announced on Tuesday.
Mr. Tuberville, a staunch ally of President Trump, parlayed the name recognition he built during his football career into a victory over Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat, in 2020.
“I’m doing this to help this country and the great state of Alabama,” Mr. Tuberville, 70, said in an interview on Fox News, where he announced his campaign after weeks of speculation.
Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, also a Republican, has been in office since 2017 and is barred by term limits from running again. Given the conservative dominance in the state, it is likely that the governor’s mansion will remain in Republican control. It is unclear whether and when other Republicans may enter the race, or if any Democrat will mount a significant challenge.
Mr. Tuberville’s decision to leave the Senate after a single term makes him the latest lawmaker hoping to trade Washington for a governorship. The governor’s mansion can offer more power and opportunity, compared with being one of many in an increasingly polarized and acrimonious Congress.
Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, announced in April that he would run for governor there; two Democratic members of the House are running for governor in New Jersey, and one former member in Virginia.
Another Republican senator, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, may soon follow Mr. Tuberville’s example. Though Ms. Blackburn has not yet announced a run to succeed Gov. Bill Lee, she has received notable pre-emptive endorsements from some state Republicans.
Mr. Tuberville was a political newcomer when he defeated Jeff Sessions, who had served as a United States senator and as President Trump’s first attorney general, in the Republican Senate primary in Alabama in 2020.
He was dogged by questions about his Alabama residency because he owns property in the Florida Panhandle, while members of his family own the home that he listed as his Alabama residence. (Those questions recently began to resurface in anticipation of his run for governor, given that the residency requirements are tougher for that position.)
Ten days after he won his seat in the 2020 general election, Mr. Tuberville attracted national attention for a series of erroneous claims he made in an interview, including misidentifying the branches of government.
He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and opposed most government spending — a striking contrast early in his tenure with Alabama’s senior senator at the time, Richard C. Shelby, a champion of the earmarking process for federal spending.
Mr. Tuberville tangled with the Biden administration over a Pentagon policy that allowed abortion access for service members. He protested the policy by blocking hundreds of military promotions over a period of 10 months. Some people in Alabama believed that Mr. Tuberville’s action was one of the reasons the Biden administration scrapped a plan to move the U.S. Space Command headquarters to Huntsville, Ala.
He has continued to lean heavily on his sports résumé: his website bills his campaign as “Coach for Governor.”
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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