In election defeat, Sessions still supports president
MOBILE, Ala. — Jeff Sessions took the stage with the same sense of conviction he had displayed in giddier times at a Mobile stadium almost five years ago, declaring once more that Donald Trump’s vision was right for America.
Yet the political circumstances were far different Tuesday night for the longtime Alabama senator who was the president's first attorney general.
The boisterous throngs that had greeted Trump and Sessions at an August 2015 rally were a distant memory as Sessions conceded defeat in Alabama’s Republican Senate runoff. That vote ended Sessions’ hopes of reclaiming the Senate seat he abandoned to join Trump’s administration. Now, he was left to defend his honor for perhaps the final time against the unconventional president he had helped elect but then enraged.
Trump tweeted his joy about the victory by former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville and Sessions' stinging defeat. The president has long chastised Sessions since Sessions recused himself in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I leave elected office with my integrity intact,” Sessions said. “I hold my head high.”
Tuberville, who will take on vulnerable Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November, boasts a profile not unlike that of Trump, the former reality television star turned politician.
Tuberville, 65, has never held public office but comes to the political arena with a well-known brand. He embraces Trump and sells himself as an outsider, a conservative culture warrior. Tuberville told his supporters that Jones threatens Alabama with “New York values.” The president, a New York native, wrote Tuesday night on Twitter that Tuberville would be a “GREAT senator.”
Tuberville, during an interview Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” returned that praise by stressing his loyalty to a president who remains popular among the white conservative majority in Alabama. Trump, he said, is ”the best president we've had in my lifetime.” The former head coach at Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati called the president “a quarterback” who has “people hanging all over him but he's still completing passes.”
Sessions pledged to help Tuberville defeat Jones in November, but he took special care when discussing the president.
“Let me say this about the president and our relationship. I leave with no regrets,” the 73-year-old Sessions said. “I was honored to serve the people of Alabama in the Senate, and I was extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments we had as attorney general.”
In Texas, Trump’s former White House physician and onetime pick to head the Department of Veterans Affairs won the Republican nomination for a U.S. House seat.
Ronny Jackson, a retired Navy rear admiral, defeated agriculture advocate Josh Winegarner in a primary runoff Tuesday in the deeply red Texas Panhandle. Jackson will face Gus Trujillo, who won Tuesday's Democratic nomination for the 13th congressional district in Texas, in the November general election. The winner will replace the retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry.
In the Democratic runoff for U.S. Senate in Texas, MJ Hegar, a former Air Force helicopter pilot, won the right to face three-term GOP Sen. John Cornyn.