BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Morgan Murphy, who led one of the most well-known Southern magazines in the country before getting into politics under U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, will be running for his boss’ former job.
Murphy, who served as Tuberville’s national security advisor from 2021 to 2023, will run for an Alabama U.S. Senate seat and is set to make his official announcement Monday night. Murphy, who from 2000 and 2015 worked as a food critic and, later, editor-in-chief at Southern Living, currently serves as a senior public diplomacy advisor on public policy in the Trump administration, specifically on Ukraine.
After getting out of media, Murphy began his Washington career in 2020, first as press secretary to Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Kash Patel.
“I’m not a politician. I’m a father, business owner, Navy officer, and Afghanistan vet,” Murphy wrote on his campaign website. “Like many Alabamians, I lived perfectly happily far from the DC Swamp until 2020, when masks became muzzles and DEI became the state religion. Determined to help President Trump fight the Marxist ideology of the radical left, I went to Washington.”
Murphy will hold a campaign kickoff event at Vulcan Park at 6 p.m. Monday.
A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, Murphy had an internship at the New York Post before going on to Vanity Fair as a special projects assistant. After a time at Forbes magazine, Murphy came back to Alabama to work for Southern Living, working as a food critic, spokesman and, beginning in 2007, its editor-in-chief.
While at Southern Living, Murphy published three books as part of his “Off the Eaten Path” series between 2011 and 2015 that explored different Southern restaurants and their recipes. He also published “Southern Living Bourbon & Bacon: Charred, Smoked, Sipped & Savored,” and a book on the relationship between men and women called “I Love You- Now Hush.”
Murphy’s political reputation became better known under his time with Tuberville, especially as the former Auburn football coach led a crusade against the U.S. Department of Defense, holding up military promotions for months over its abortion policies. In an article published in the Washington Post in 2023, reporter Ben Terris pointed to Murphy’s behind-the-scenes work on that particular policy.
“The goal was to get the secretary to respond,” Murphy told Terris. “If you don’t write back, if you don’t answer letters, if you don’t answer queries … the nice way to say it is, ‘Fool around and find out.’”
Five days after the Post ran the story, Murphy resigned. At the time, Murphy told Politico that his role in the holdup had been “overstated” in the Post piece and that he chose to resign out of respect to Tuberville.
“He is the boss and calls the shots and always has,” Murphy told Politico. “I am, was, at the end of the day, a staffer. I didn’t take kindly to a perception otherwise.”
A veteran, Murphy has been in the U.S. Naval Reserve since 1999, serving in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010.
Murphy joins an already packed campaign season for the seat, running against people like Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, U.S. Rep. Barry Moore and entrepreneur Rodney Walker.
The race will be held on November 3, 2026.
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