So, we’ll get right to the point: Alabama GOP Sen. Luther Strange just released a new web ad featuring a fictional paper with a fictional headline proclaiming that as state attorney general, he investigated the disgraced now-ex-governor who actually appointed him to replace Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate. As the ad goes on, the narrator credits Strange for Gov. Robert Bentley’s resignation even though Strange was no longer attorney general by that point, while another fake headline claims that Bentley pled guilty to “sex coverup,” which is also false. Strange’s chutzpah is so strong, you could use it to fry fried dill pickles.
Just exactly why requires a bit of backstory. Strange faces a competitive August GOP primary this fall ahead of the December special election, and he’s earned actual bad headlines from actual publications for months. Bentley, as you may know, was accused last year of using state resources and personnel to cover up a long-term affair with a top staffer. The Republican-led legislature began a slow-moving impeachment inquiry, but just before Election Day, Strange—then still the state’s attorney general—sent lawmakers a letter asking they halt their proceedings "until I am able to report to you that the necessary related work of my office has been completed." Legislators complied, seeing as they rightly concluded that Strange was conducting his own investigation.
However, after Trump nominated Sessions to become his attorney general following his surprise victory in November, Strange belatedly claimed in December that he had never actually said he was looking into the governor, lest he look shady for coveting a Senate appointment from someone he was supposedly investigating. But of course, once Bentley tapped Strange, his replacement as state attorney general confirmed that, oh yeah, Strange's office had been investigating Bentley all along, which Strange later conceded was true.
Last month, Bentley finally resigned in utter shame, and Republican Kay Ivey, Alabama’s new governor, moved up the special election for the remainder of Sessions’ term from 2018 to this December. Despite being the nominal incumbent, Strange quickly attracted several notable primary foes, including former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, a darling of social conservatives who won’t hesitate to make Strange’s ties to Bentley an issue. There will be a September runoff if no one takes a majority in the primary, so Strange can’t just hope all his opponents split the vote and allow him to slip through with a plurality.
And Strange certainly knows his seamy Bentley connection is an issue, which is why he’s using his opening ad to portray himself as a crusader against corruption—a mantle that’s as fictitious as the “newspaper” featured in his spot.
Strange’s ad opens with a narrator proclaiming, “We sent him to Montgomery to clean up political corruption,” as Strange drives a dirty car through a car wash and soaks some men in nice suits. Just after the narrator praises Strange for “fighting corrupt Montgomery insiders and special interests,” a headline from something called the “Valley Times” flashes by proclaiming, “Strange will investigate Bentley.”
But as AL.com’s Kyle Whitmire notes, neither that headline nor the “Valley Times” actually exist outside the alternate universe this campaign ad takes place in. (Perhaps it’s published in Hill Valley, California.) And even if this headline was true—which it isn’t—that wouldn’t excuse the fact that Strange tried to pretend as though he might not actually have been investigating Bentley while the governor was considering him for the Senate, a charade Strange kept up until he was in Washington.
The narrator then brags about Strange’s conservative values, including how he fought “gay marriage” (utilizing another made-up headline) before going back to talking about Strange’s allegedly extensive work prosecuting corrupt Alabama politicians. Another pseudo headline about a separate notorious corruption case appears on-screen, saying that GOP state House Speaker Mike Hubbard was “sentenced to 4 years.”
But while the attorney general’s office did successfully prosecute Hubbard, Strange didn’t: Whitmire reminds us that Strange recused himself because his campaign had business ties to the speaker. In fact, it’s possible that this portion of the ad could amount to something worse than mere resume inflation. Whitmire writes that Strange’s recusal meant he wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with the case against Hubbard, but “if he’s now saying that wasn’t the case, then maybe that’s the sort of issue Hubbard might find useful on appeal.”
And it just goes on. The ad then goes back to Bentley as still one more phony headline reads, “Bentley resigns, pleads guilty to sex coverup,” while the narrator lists “the investigation and governor's resignation” as one of Strange’s accomplishments. Whitmire notes that Strange wasn’t even attorney general when Bentley resigned, precisely because Bentley had promoted him to the Senate two months earlier. Nor did Bentley plead guilty to “sex coverup”: He pled guilty (as part of a deal with prosecutors in conjunction with his resignation) to some decidedly unsexy campaign finance violations. The rest of the spot goes on to describe what an awesome conservative Strange is. We won’t subject you to that portion, though Whitmire sums it up well as “force-feed[ing] us rancid red meat like it’s chow time in Guantanamo and we’re the inmates.”
Despite Strange’s considerable baggage, he’s now an official member of the Republican Senators Club, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants him to stay there: McConnell’s allied super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, recently reserved $2.6 million to help Strange in August’s GOP primary. Politico also recently reported that SLF has been very openly digging up dirt on Alabama state Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, who has been mulling a primary against Strange. What are they looking into? Marsh’s “ties to unpopular ex-Gov. Robert Bentley.” The chutzpah never ends with these guys.