Curious political story out of Alabama

The hot topic of conversation is whether Alabama U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville will run for the governor's seat in 2026. Gov. Kay Ivey is not only term limited but 80 years old. Not a robust 80 either.

Tuberville is considered an early favorite should he run and is predicted to win easily due to his chumminess with Trump, but there's a lot about the move that makes no sense. While Tuberville is the state's senior senator above Katie Britt, he is only four years into his initial six-year term. He brought a reputation for laziness, prevarication and greed with him to the capital, something he earned through an up-and-down college football coaching career and later financial fraud charges.

From Business Insider, Feb. 9, 2022:

When asked about proposals to ban Congress from stock trading, Tuberville called them "ridiculous."

"They might as well start sending robots up here," Tuberville told The Independent's Eric Michael Garcia. "You can't do anything."

"I think it would really cut back on the amount of people that would want to come up here and serve, I really do," Tuberville added. "We don't need that."

So why would Tuberville run for governor? Like the Senate, it is a statewide race so you're not reducing the area you must stump.

Governor has term limits. Senate does not.

The governor has to campaign again just four years after entering office. Senate terms are 50 percent longer.

The Senate is not only far more prestigious, but has many, many times more opportunities for personal enrichment. We know that matters to Tuberville.

The biggest point of controversy is that Tuberville appears to actually be a resident of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where he owns a $5 million house. He owns a small home in Alabama that he bought just one year before launching his Senate campaign. Chances are if you looked at Tuberville's tax returns, he files in Florida where there is no state income tax. Now Alabama Republicans aren't going to stand in his way over this if he wants to run, despite it running afoul of the law. No, the catch here is that while in the Senate, Tuberville can head back to Florida on weekends, holidays and recesses. If he is governor, he will have to live in Montgomery, Alabama.

Plus, the governor's workload is bigger than what Tuberville puts in on Capitol Hill.

Nothing about Tuberville's decision to run makes any sense. So why do it?

Scuttlebutt has it that a lot of urging has come from the camp of his junior senator, Katie Britt. The hyper-ambitious Britt has wasted no time pumping her visibility as much as she could, falling in line quickly as a MAGA darling and even pushing her way to the front of the line for the response to Biden's 2024 State of the Union address, despite the deep-fried Tracy Flick having been in office only a year.

Could she manipulate Tuberville to that extent? Well, not only does her hulking bodyguard husband have a college football background that strikes familiar chords with the old coach, but Tuberville's deficient mental acumen is widely known. He would be susceptible to a mildly attractive, and undoubtedly smarter, younger woman's wiles.

If Tuberville heads to Montgomery, Britt becomes senior senator. Word has it she is determined to have herself named as VP on the GOP ticket for POTUS, whether that is to J.D. Vance or whomever. From what has been seen with her oddly meteoric rise in Washington, she appears as if she would step on anyone needed to get there.