The first official challenge to Tommy Tuberville’s run for governor based on his residency has landed with the Alabama Republican Party.
Republican candidate and businessman Ken McFeeters, who is running against Tuberville for governor, filed the official complaint Tuesday morning, according to a press release he sent to media.
The challenge cites Alabama’s constitution, Article V, Section 117, which requires that all candidates for governor reside in the state for the “seven years next before the date of their election.” McFeeters notes that courts in Alabama have repeatedly defined the term “next” in the requirements to mean the continuous seven years immediately prior to the election.
As numerous media outlets have documented over the past few months, Tuberville will have significant trouble meeting that requirement.
“Public reporting and available records raise serious and unresolved questions as to whether Senator Tuberville has been a continuous resident citizen of Alabama for the seven years immediately preceding the upcoming election,” McFeeters challenge states. “Senator Tuberville has represented that his legal residence is his son’s home in Auburn, Alabama. However, extensive travel records disclosed through his Senate expense reports and his political action committee filings appear to show repeated and sustained travel to and from Florida, with minimal evidence of regular travel to or from Auburn.”
The problem for Tuberville, and now the Alabama Republican Party, is that residency requirements for governor are much more strenuous than those for being a U.S. senator from the state – a job that requires that the office holder live in Alabama for only a day. That is why Tuberville has faced little serious scrutiny over the fact that until recently he held no property in the state.
As McFeeters notes in his challenge, Tuberville’s son and wife co-owned a modest, 1,500-square foot home in Auburn since 2018. But the sitting U.S. senator sold his last piece of property in 2023. Tommy Tuberville within the last year added his name to the deed of that home.
Tuberville and his wife own a multi-million dollar beach home in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. As APR has reported previously, Tuberville’s travel records, both from his Senate office records and records of his political action committee’s spending, to and from Washington D.C. show frequent and routine travel to Gulf Coast airports and the use of a Florida-based shuttle service – to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars – to shuttle him to and from the airport and his home.
Even if Sen. Tuberville had owned the Auburn home for the past seven years, it would not prove his residency. There are several factors that determine residency, according to the courts, including the place a person most commonly lives, where the majority of their possessions reside and the place of residence cited on official government forms. One of the most common pieces of evidence would be tax returns, since it would be illegal to reside in a state and not file state taxes there.
Despite repeated requests from media, Tuberville has not provided evidence that he filed taxes in Alabama for the past seven years.
How seriously the Alabama Republican Party’s executive committee takes McFeeters’ challenge is a hotly contested issue around the state and among politicos. Numerous ALGOP officials have privately said that they want to hold a full and fair hearing on the challenge, but others have remained noncommittal. The prevailing theory is that ALGOP leadership will dispense with the challenge, no matter how valid, rather quickly.
For his part, though, McFeeters plans to make it about the law and nothing more.
“The Alabama Constitution is a covenant between the people of this state and their government. It not only empowers government but, critically, limits it,” he wrote in his challenge. “Compliance with its requirements is not optional, nor is it subject to political convenience.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
