When Does Sen Doug Jones Run for Reelection Again
Fighting an Uphill Senate Re-election Boxing, Doug Jones Does It His Style
Mr. Jones, from deeply conservative Alabama, is the Senate's virtually vulnerable Democratic incumbent. But far from tiptoeing toward re-ballot, he seems almost liberated by his predicament.
WASHINGTON — Politically endangered lawmakers nearly to face voters often observe themselves tempering their instincts, breaking with their parties on tough votes to prove independence and placate constituents, and offering mealy-mouthed platitudes on the well-nigh divisive topics of the 24-hour interval.
Not Senator Doug Jones, Democrat of Alabama, considered his party'southward most endangered incumbent facing re-election next calendar week.
His start television advertisements of the year featured him using stark, stirring language to talk about the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in constabulary custody and promote mask wearing. He voted to impeach President Trump and declared on the Senate floor that "Black lives thing." He has blasted every bit "shameful" Alabama'due south law criminalizing abortion in nearly all cases, and suggested raising the age requirement to purchase a gun from eighteen to 21.
And on Monday dark, just over a week before Election Day, he joined the residue of his party in voting against Mr. Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
"These are all things a lot of people felt similar wouldn't be politically expedient for him," said Chris England, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party. "I don't think that'due south necessarily something he concerns himself with."
The odds that voters will return Mr. Jones to Washington and reject his Republican opponent, Tommy Tuberville, a onetime Auburn Academy football omnibus who has pledged fealty to Mr. Trump, are fifty-fifty more unlikely than those he beat in 2017, when he jolted the political establishment with an unexpected victory over Roy S. Moore, who was defendant of sexually assaulting and pursuing teenage girls.
But instead of tiptoeing around the Senate as and so many politically embattled lawmakers past and nowadays have done, skittering away from reporters when asked about hot-button bug or giving tortured explanations of tricky votes, Mr. Jones has appeared almost liberated by his predicament.
In an interview, Mr. Jones insisted that he was posed to vanquish the odds once more in his deeply conservative country. But if he is facing his final mantle in the Senate, he is determined to exercise it his mode.
He did non see with Judge Barrett to discuss her nomination, even as some of his Democratic colleagues did. He unloaded in an interview with local reporters on the push button to ostend a nominee before the election, calling information technology a "political power take hold of" that he refused to "have any part of," and rebuking Senate Republicans for prioritizing information technology over other business.
Some of his near striking political choices came after Mr. Floyd'due south death and the rise of the Blackness Lives Matter movement, a topic many moderate Democrats have gone through contortions to avoid.
"Somebody's got to speak out," Mr. Jones said of his decision to publicly accost the movement. "And if yous base the calculation just on whether it will win you lot an election, and then you lot will never, ever do it."
"That'south the problem that I've seen with and then many Democrats from the South: The calculation was based not on helping the state or the state, but whether or not information technology helps the particular ballot," he continued. "This is a much bigger issue than one Senate election in the state of Alabama."
Even before he was elected, Mr. Jones straddled the demands of party loyalty and reaching across the political aisle. But on some issues, he has stepped out squarely on his ain.
Best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, Mr. Jones has long been preoccupied with the gap between how things are and how they should be. Built-in and raised in segregated Birmingham, where his grandfather displayed a figurine of Eugene (Bull) Connor, the police commissioner who used dogs and fire hoses to pause upwards civil rights demonstrations, he is acutely conscious of the symbolic ability of elected officials' dandy pulpit.
From the Senate flooring, he called the video of Mr. Floyd in law custody an "image of a society and a civilization that keeps a knee on the necks of Black Americans through systemic racism and bigotry."
"I feel similar it'southward part of my responsibility to endeavor to give people opposing views and to try to assistance give them as much information as I can that volition aid brainwash them for at present and into the future. That's pretty difficult in a partisan world," Mr. Jones said. "If I don't say the things that I'm saying, we're just going to stay stuck in the by. And we've got to move forward."
Paradigm
In 2017, Mr. Jones bandage himself as a figure of conciliation, and now on the entrada trail, he boasts of the legislation he has sponsored with Republicans and takes pains to notation that he votes with Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, every bit frequently as he votes with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. He kicked off his re-election around the idea of "One Alabama," pledging not to run a campaign that was "us versus them or skilful versus evil."
Merely public polling has shown Mr. Jones trailing Mr. Tuberville, who has kept a low contour on the entrada trail, in the depression double digits. And while he is outrunning erstwhile Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Autonomous presidential nominee, Mr. Jones would demand a significant number of Republicans to split their tickets in a land where Mr. Trump won by 28 points in 2016.
"Alabama remains a deeply Republican land," said David Hughes, a professor of political science and pollster at Auburn University at Montgomery. "While Doug Jones has done a actually good job positioning himself to outperform those traditional expectations, there'south still a really steep hill to climb to go over the colina equally the winner."
His grim re-election chances, paired with his close relationship with Mr. Biden, have fueled speculation that he could be tapped as attorney full general if the Democratic presidential nominee defeats Mr. Trump. At a contempo rally in Leeds, he recounted to voters how Mr. Biden, who well-nigh addressed the crowd, called him late one night in 2017 to encourage him to run for Senate.
"He said, 'Doug, you have got an opportunity,'" Mr. Jones recalled. "'Y'all have an opportunity with your background, with your history, with your compassion, with trying to help people. Yous've got an opportunity to redeem the soul of Alabama.'"
Merely Mr. Jones, for now, is house that the only perch in Washington he is interested in is the Senate.
"I know Joe Biden wants me in the Usa Senate, which is where I want to exist," Mr. Jones said in an interview. "He needs people similar me in the U.s.a. Senate, and he needs a voice that not only has been his friend for a long, long time, but somebody that he knows can achieve across the aisle."
Almost every bit an afterthought, he added, "That'south the answer to that correct now."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/us/politics/doug-jones-alabama-senate.html
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