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 have lived in the state for seven years.
Ken McFeeters, who is running against Tuberville for the Republican nomination for governor, filed the challenge Tuesday with the Alabama Republican Party. McFeeters said in a phone interview that he believes Tuberville lives in a multimillion-dollar beach house in Florida instead of a smaller house he listed as his residence in Auburn, Alabama.
Property tax records show the former Auburn University football coach owns a home in Auburn, Alabama, with an assessed value of $291,780 on which he claims a 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 initially purchased by Tuberville’s wife and son in 2017. 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 a Tuberville woman as trustee.
“It belittles the average person in Alabama that he thinks we believe he’s being sincere when he says he lives in his son’s $300,000 house when he has a $6 million beach house. Where do you live?” McFeeters said.
McFeeters 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 a true domicile.” McFeeters said Tuberville’s travel records also show frequent trips to the Florida Panhandle, which he said reinforces the idea that he resides there.
Mallory Jaspers, a spokeswoman for Tuberville, called the challenge “a ridiculous PR stunt by 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 house remains the senator’s primary residence.
Tuberville faced similar accusations in his Senate campaign. Opponents called him a “Florida man” or an “Alabama tourist.” 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 checked it. I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought it was a problem,” said Tuberville. Tuberville said it will be up to the Republican Party to decide any challenge, but “what I’ve heard from them, they feel good about it.”
Tuberville was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He then coached at Texas Tech and the University of Cincinnati. He went to work for ESPN after retiring from coaching. 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, about two weeks before announcing his candidacy for the Senate.
Jeannie Burniston, spokeswoman for the Alabama Republican Party, said challenges are heard and decided by the party’s 21-member leadership committee. Burniston said the committee will decide if there is enough evidence for a challenge to proceed to a hearing where both sides present evidence. Burniston said she could not comment on the challenges.
The awkwardly written requirement in the Alabama Constitution states that the governor and lieutenant governor “shall be citizens of the United States ten years and resident citizens of this state at least seven years next preceding the date of their election.”
McFeeters said it is important that the Republican Party takes the issue seriously. He said that Tuberville should be asked to provide clear evidence that he has been living 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 vague. She said that they could be interpreted as seven consecutive years or they could be seven years divided by periods of living elsewhere. But she said Alabama’s culture and history support the argument that it should be seven years in a row.
“Alabama’s culture is suspicious of outsiders and historically most Alabama governors were born and raised in the state, often being descended from generations of Alabamians,” Hamill wrote in an email. Her comments were first reported by the Alabama Reflector.