Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, easily won his primary on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, as he seeks to be the next governor of his state. His victory sets up a general election showdown with former Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat Mr. Tuberville beat in 2020 for his current Senate seat.
Mr. Tuberville crushed Mr. Jones by 20 percentage points six years ago, and enters the general election campaign as the clear favorite to succeed Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican who could not run again because of term limits.
But the contest could attract national attention, since it will pit a former civil rights lawyer, Mr. Jones, who prosecuted church bombers from the Ku Klux Klan, against Mr. Tuberville, who has used harshly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric to rally support.
Even in a state long controlled by Republicans, Mr. Tuberville would most likely steer the state further to the right. A fierce ally of President Trump, the senator has been unwilling to support any policy that he perceives as insufficiently conservative. This month, he delivered a speech on the Senate floor decrying Muslims and immigrants as he stood next to a sign that read “assimilate or go home.”
Standing under the shadow of Birmingham’s famed statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, Mr. Tuberville pledged to help the state continue to build its industries and support its families. And he framed his rematch against Mr. Jones as a competition against an ideology that was at odds with Alabama’s priorities and values.
“I’m running against an ideology that is so bad, that is so far left, that has nothing to do with the last 250 years that this country has been great,” Mr. Tuberville told the crowd, shortly before celebratory fireworks rang out. He added, “it’s going to be fun to run against, because they have nothing positive to say.”
Mr. Tuberville came to prominence in Alabama as a successful football coach at Auburn University; his aides still call him “coach” and tossed footballs branded with “Coach Tuberville” into the crowd after the primary election was called. In the Senate, he has put aside that sports profile to defend political hard lines over negotiations on policy.
He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election shortly after he took office. During the Biden administration, he blocked dozens of military promotions for 10 months to protest a Pentagon policy that allowed abortion access for service members.
Mr. Jones is the last Democrat to win statewide in Alabama, defeating Roy Moore in a 2017 special election dominated by accusations that Mr. Moore had sexually assaulted and pursued teenage girls.
In a statement, Mr. Jones said the primary “was about the belief that Alabama deserves a state government that works for the people — not just the well-connected and powerful.” He added, “Tonight, we begin the work of building that future together.”
After the Supreme Court last month weakened the Voting Rights Act, Mr. Tuberville aggressively pushed his state to carve up both existing majority-Black House districts and help his party elect an entirely Republican congressional delegation. (The state, in court filings, has said it would aim to use a map that maintains one majority-Black district, now represented by a Democrat, Representative Terri Sewell.)
Mr. Jones, who helped prosecute Klansmen who bombed a Birmingham church and killed four young girls, has criticized the decision to move forward with a new map and joined demonstrations against the new district lines.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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