On Wednesday evening, Alabama Rep. Bradley Byrne became the first notable Republican to announce a bid against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. Byrne, who has represented a safely red House seat in the Mobile area since 2013, is very unlikely to have the GOP primary to himself, though. Jones is running for re-election in a state that backed Donald Trump by an enormous 62-34 margin, and a number of other Republicans are eyeing this contest.
Indeed, the radical anti-tax Club for Growth made it clear just before Byrne jumped in that they very much wanted an alternative candidate. The Club released a poll from WPA Intelligence of a hypothetical GOP primary between Byrne and fellow Rep. Gary Palmer, and they showed the two tied 27-27.
Palmer, who won his suburban Birmingham seat in 2014 with the Club’s help, has not yet shown any obvious interest in this contest. Back in November, Republicans told Politico that they doubted he’d run now that he's been elected chair of the House Republican Policy Committee.
However, it sounds like the Club will keep casting around for another candidate to take on Byrne if they don’t get Palmer. Their leader, David McIntosh, declared that “people who know Byrne, know he’s not a conservative,” and added, “The people of Alabama deserve better than a fake politician who says one thing in Alabama and votes the wrong way in Washington.”
The Club often opposes candidates close to the party establishment in GOP primaries, and Byrne very much fits that mold.
The congressman has had a long career in Alabama politics going back to 1994, when he was elected to the state Board of Education as a Democrat. Byrne switched parties in 1997 and, after a stint representing Baldwin County in the Mobile suburbs, he became chancellor of the state's community college system.
Byrne ran for governor in 2010, and he began that open seat contest as the frontrunner. However, he wound up caught in an unusual position where he was successfully attacked from both the right and the left. State Rep. Robert Bentley, who was still years away from the sex scandal that would ultimately define his career, played up his own ties to prominent social conservatives while going after Byrne for having once been a Democrat.
A dark money group also ran ads declaring that Byrne had suggested that the Bible was “only partially true” and that he believed that evolution, rather than creationism, “best explains the origin of life.” The attack on Byrne’s views of the Bible attracted plenty of attention during this campaign and, as we’ll discuss, for years to come.
Byrne had filled out a candidate questionnaire from the Press-Register the previous year that asked, “Do you believe that the Bible is literally true?” and rather than answering yes or no, he sent the paper an email saying that neither response represented his feelings. In a follow-up interview, Byrne said he thought “there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.” Days later, Byrne stated that he believed “every word is true” in the Bible and that the Press-Register had misrepresented his views. However, this very much did not put the issue to rest.
At the same time, teachers unions—one of the only liberal influences left in Alabama—also had it in for Byrne from his time leading the community college system, and they, too, ran ads against him. The Alabama Education Association encouraged its members to vote in the GOP primary and Bentley also openly called for Democrats to vote for him. Byrne lost the primary runoff to Bentley 56-44, and Bentley went on to win the general election.
Byrne got his chance for a political comeback three years later when Rep. Jo Bonner resigned from the 1st Congressional District. Byrne advanced to the GOP runoff with tea partier Dean Young, who had lost the 2012 primary to Bonner 56-24. Prominent groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the NRA mobilized behind Byrne, who touted his conservative views but still said it was important “to work with people, in Washington and at home,” a viewpoint that didn’t exactly play well with the conservative base in the tea party era.
Young, by contrast, didn’t raise much money or recieve much outside help, but he attracted national attention by declaring that he believed Barack Obama was born in Kenya. However, Young also directed plenty of acrimony at the establishment-backed Byrne, whom he labeled a “country club Republican.” Young also reused an issue that had dogged Byrne in 2010 when he declared that his opponent was lying when he insisted that he believed the Bible was literally true, an accusation Byrne once again vehemently denied.
Byrne ended up beating Young just 52.5-47.5, though he had no trouble winning the general election. The two faced off again in 2016, and this time, Byrne won 60-40.
Byrne has been a pretty quiet member of the House and he’s usually been a dependable vote for the GOP leadership. In 2016, after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video where Donald Trump was caught bragging about sexually assaulting women, Byrne was one of several Republicans who called for him to drop out of the presidential race. However, Byrne became a reliable Trump ally after he won, and his old Trump skepticism didn’t cause him any trouble in 2018.
Byrne also seems to have learned from 2016 never again doubt his party’s standard bearer. During the 2017 special election for Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat, multiple women accused GOP nominee Roy Moore of preying on them when they were teenagers. Byrne said he had “no reason to doubt the stories that they’ve told, but Judge Moore has denied every one of them,” and he refused to call for Moore to drop out. Jones ended up narrowly beating Moore.
