This year, the six-term congressman helped run for office in Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and launched a Senate candidacy. He then garnered the support of the former president and put him at the forefront of his campaign, displaying “GUARANTEED BY TRUMP” above his own name on banners. Brooks is now first in the 2022 race.
“No candidate in Alabama could say with a straight face that he would pass a Trump endorsement,” said Republican Rep. Barry Moore, who supports Brooks. “For most Alabamians, Trump’s support is the best guarantee that the receiving candidate will be facing the fight for the issues that concern them.”
But the Senate race will test Trump’s enduring strength, as some Republicans are looking for an alternative to Brooks. In addition to placing his unfounded opposition to the certification of the 2020 election at the center of his candidacy, Brooks has made a number of controversial statements, speaking of a “war on whites” and similar sympathy with a man of Police arrested this week in connection with a bomb threat near the U.S. Capitol.
“Although the motivation of this terrorist is not yet publicly known and I generally understand the anger of the citizens directed at dictatorial socialism and its threat to freedom, liberty and the very fabric of northern society. American, “Brooks said on Twitter. “The way to stop the march of socialism is for American patriots to back down from the 2022 and 2024 elections.”
GOP primary candidates against Brooks include: Katie Britt, former president and CEO of the Alabama Business Council; Lynda Blanchard, Trump’s U.S. ambassador to Slovenia; and businesswoman Jessica Taylor. If anyone wins, they are likely to become the first woman elected to the Alabama Senate.
While Blanchard invested millions in his campaign, Britt got the maximum number of candidates during the second financial quarter of the year: $ 2.2 million, which is more than double what Brooks contributed during that time. . Britt also enlisted the support of Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, her former boss and the man in charge.
Shelby told CNN that Brooks is a “marginal congressman” and “not a normal man,” while Britt is “by far the most qualified and promising candidate in that position.”
But the former president’s rally in Cullman, Alabama, which is part of a congressional district where Trump received 81 percent of the vote, the majority of all in the country, will remind voters who he supports in the Senate.
Brooks’ war chest is also likely to increase. The congressman has posted ads on Facebook to tell his followers that if they donate $ 1,000 per person, he will install them in an air-conditioned tent and seats near the stage of the rally. For $ 250, he’ll make sure they get “excellent seats”.
The Trump factor
Other candidates have attacked Brooks, who was first elected to a public office as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1982, as a career politician.
But Trump’s support could further influence Republican Party primaries, prompting candidates to leave after their election while running for the former president. Britt has already posted Facebook ads saying it’s “time to end Trump’s border wall.”
“We are very proud of our hospitality here in Alabama and welcome President Trump back to our state,” Britt said in a statement. “He showed the nation that we don’t need ineffective career politicians in Washington. We need someone to do things in the United States Senate, and I’m that person.”
And Taylor, who lost a 2020 home run before announcing his 2022 Senate campaign, tried to attack Brooks for not being a strong enough supporter of Trump. He noted that he attacked Trump during the 2016 race and did not give in to the 2016 or 2020 Trump campaigns, although he did give GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.
“Everything speaks and doesn’t take action, as its history will be reflected in Congress,” Taylor said. “He’s been up there since 2010 and he’s achieved absolutely nothing.”
A Brooks aide declined a request for an interview with the congressman and did not answer further questions for comment.
Trump has an erratic record in recent races in the U.S. Senate in Alabama. His 2017 endorsements to the then Sen. Luther Strange in the Republican Party primaries and Judge Roy Moore in the general election were unsuccessful. But while Trump may not be a king, he may destroy an Alabama Republican candidate’s campaign.
In 2020, then-president attacked Jeff Sessions, stemming from its consequences on Sessions ’treatment of Russia’s investigation as Trump’s attorney general. This ended with Sessions ’proposal to return to the Senate. Once loved in the state (he didn’t face any opponents in 2014), they lost sessions against former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville in the primaries, defeating Democrat Doug Jones in the general election .
So far, Trump’s involvement in the 2022 race has been limited to praising Brooks. “Few Republicans have as much VALUE and FIGHT as Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks said,” Trump said in April.
Brooks campaign based on Big Lie
After initially supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as president in 2016, Brooks quickly became a tough advocate after Trump’s victory. In 2020, Brooks became one of the first members of Congress to publicly say he would oppose Joe Biden’s victory certification. The night before the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, he tweeted that Trump had personally asked him to talk “about the weaknesses of the electoral system that the Social Democrats exploited to steal this election.”
At the rally, Brooks said, “Today is the day American patriots start tearing down names and kicking ass.” A few hours later, the pro-Trump crowd stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop Congress certification.
After the insurrection, Brooks demanded that “the perpetrators of the Capitol attacks” be “prosecuted to the extent of the law.” But he also falsely suggested that Antifa’s left-wing activists “orchestrated” the attack. Two Democrats tabled a resolution to censure Brooks for his comments at the rally.
Brooks has not regretted his statements at the Jan. 6 rally.
“I did my duty for my country,” he told CNN in March.
In a speech to the Senate that same month, Brooks, 66, called for the cancellation of culture, “technological censorship,” rising national debt, the media, transgender rights and undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border. He attacked the $ 1.9 trillion Covid bill from the Biden administration for providing $ 5 billion to farmers of color, stating, “The Social Democratic message: whites don’t need to apply.” He then said that “all racism is disgusting” and that people should be judged by their characters instead of their races.
He also mentioned that he had “led the office” to annul the 2020 election, that he had been endorsed twice by Trump and that he had been on Trump’s side twice during two dismissals, and that “no other candidate” did. you can say.
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.