Republican voters in Alabama are headed to the polls on Tuesday to choose from a field of primary contenders vying to replace Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican who is vacating his seat to run for governor.
The winner will be an overwhelming favorite in the general election in deep-red Alabama, where Democrats have won just one statewide race since 2008. The Senate primary pits Representative Barry Moore against the state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, and Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL.
Mr. Moore received President Trump’s endorsement months ago and has a well-funded campaign. The election will offer the latest test of the power of Mr. Trump’s endorsement, days after primary voters in Louisiana rejected the incumbent Republican senator Bill Cassidy at the president’s urging.
Michael Lowry, a Republican pollster in Alabama and former chief of staff to Representative Robert Aderholt, said there was no clear front-runner in his state. “This is a tossup,” Mr. Lowry said, adding that “the candidates have not seemed to connect with voters.”
If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the two leading vote-getters will advance to a runoff scheduled for next month.
Here’s what to know.
Moore hopes to be lifted by Trump’s endorsement.
Mr. Moore, a third-term congressman from a deeply conservative district in the southern part of the state, said his closing pitch to voters was that he had been “in the fight” with Mr. Trump in “trying to get that America first agenda finished.” (Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 30 percentage points in 2024.)
“We have relationships with the White House — that matters,” Mr. Moore, 59, said in an interview. “As the president talks about the golden age of America, there’s an opportunity for Alabama to be in that golden age.”
Mr. Trump said in his endorsement that Mr. Moore had “been with me from the very beginning.”
Marshall has been at the center of major political fights in the state.
Mr. Marshall, 61, has served as the state’s attorney general for nearly a decade. In recent weeks, he has played a key role in a congressional redistricting effort in the state.
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, his office asked the court to clear the way for Alabama lawmakers to redraw the state’s House map. Last week, the court followed through.
Mr. Marshall’s office also said last week that it had opened an investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent civil rights group based in the state. The organization has angered Republicans by targeting groups that many conservatives consider mainstream.
Mr. Marshall said in an in interview that he had “taken on the issues that are of significant concern to the people of Alabama.”
Hudson is a wild card.
Some opinion polls have shown Mr. Hudson competing with Mr. Moore and Mr. Marshall. Mr. Hudson, 40, ran for Jefferson County sheriff in 2022 and was the first candidate to join the Senate race.
He has put his Christian faith at the center of his campaign. “I’m a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, and that’s the most important thing,” he said in an interview.
He is also campaigning on a call for congressional term limits, arguing that senators and representatives should not serve for longer than 12 years.
Four candidates are running in the Democratic primary.
Competing in the Democratic race are Dakarai Larriett, a businessman; Kyle Sweetser, a former construction worker who has said he voted for Mr. Trump twice before turning on him; Everett Wess, a lawyer; and Mark S. Wheeler II, a chemist.
The general election is not expected to be competitive. But Democrats have won in Alabama before: In 2017, Doug Jones, a former prosecutor, won a Senate seat in Alabama after his opponent, Roy S. Moore, was weighed down by accusations of sexual abuse. Mr. Jones lost his seat in 2020 and is now running for governor.
Polls close at 7 p.m. local time.
Voters in Alabama who are in line by 7 p.m. will be allowed to cast ballots. (Most of the state is on Central time, and a sliver is on Eastern time.) The state has open primaries, which means voters can choose a Republican or Democratic ballot. If the election goes to a runoff, it will be scheduled for June 16.
The post What to Know About the Republican Senate Primary in Alabama appeared first on New York Times.
