Montgomery, Ala. (AP) – A Republican challenger is challenging U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for Alabama governor, accusing the football coach-turned-politician of failing to meet the legal requirement to live in the state for seven years.
Ken McPheeters, who is running against Tuberville for the Republican nomination for governor, filed a challenge with the Alabama Republican Party on Tuesday. McPheeters said in a phone interview that he believed Tuberville lived in a multimillion-dollar midtown Florida home, rather than the smaller home he listed as his residence in Auburn, Alabama.
Property tax records show the former Auburn University football coach owns a home in Auburn, Alabama, assessed at $291,780 on which he claims the homestead exemption. He also owns a beach house in Walton County, Florida with an estimated market value of $5.5 million, according to property records.
The Auburn home was originally purchased in 2017 by Tuberville’s wife and son. The senator’s name was later added to the property, and the son’s name was removed. Both the Auburn and Florida homes appear to have recently been placed in a revocable trust with Tuberville’s wife as trustee.
“It’s insulting to the average person in Alabama that we believe he’s being honest when he says he lives in his son’s $300,000 house when he’s got a $6 million beach house. Where do you live?” McPheeters said.
McPheeters wrote in his letter to party officials that the available records, “if accurate, strongly suggest that Auburn may have been used as an address of convenience rather than as an actual residence.” McPheeters said Tuberville’s travel records also show frequent trips to the Florida panhandle, which he said reinforces the idea that he lived in the location.
Tuberville spokeswoman Mallory Jaspers called the challenge “a ridiculous PR stunt from a desperate candidate.”
“Senator Tuberville has proudly represented Alabama in the United States Senate for the past six years. This manufactured narrative didn’t work when he was running for Senate in 2019, and it certainly won’t work now,” Jaspers wrote in an email. Jaspers said the Auburn home remains the senator’s primary residence.
Tuberville faced similar allegations during his Senate campaign. Opponents called him a “Florida man” or a “tourist in Alabama.” The Senate has a less stringent residency requirement before taking office.
Tuberville told The Associated Press earlier this month that he believes he meets the residency requirement.
“We looked into it. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought it was a problem,” Tuberville said. Tuberville said it would be up to the Republican Party to decide on any challenge, but “from what I’ve heard from them, they feel good.”
Tuberville was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He then coached at Texas Tech and the University of Cincinnati. After retiring from coaching, he went to work for ESPN. In a 2017 promotional video for ESPN, he talked about moving to Florida after retiring from coaching.
Tuberville voted in Florida in 2018. He registered to vote in Alabama on March 28, 2019, two weeks before announcing his run for the Senate.
Jenny Burniston, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Republican Party, said the challenges will be heard and decided by the party’s 21-member steering committee. Burniston said the committee will decide whether there is enough evidence for the challenge to proceed at a hearing where both sides present evidence. Burniston said he could not comment on challenges.
A surprisingly worded requirement in the Alabama constitution is that the governor and lieutenant governor “must have been citizens of the United States for ten years and have been residents of this state for at least seven years preceding the date of their election.”
McPheeters said it’s important the Republican Party takes this issue seriously. He said Tuberville was asked to provide clear evidence that he had lived in Alabama for seven consecutive years.
Susan Pace Hamill, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said the language of the residency requirement is unclear. She said that this could be interpreted as seven years in a row or it could be seven years separated by menstrual periods elsewhere. But she said Alabama’s culture and history support the argument that it should be seven consecutive years.
“Alabama’s culture is suspect to outsiders and historically most Alabama governors were born and raised in the state, often descended from generations of Alabamians,” Hamill wrote in an email. His comments were first reported by the Alabama Reflector.
