Republican candidate challenges Tuberville residency, says he appears to live Florida, not Alabama

By KIM CHANDLER
Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A Republican opponent is challenging U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor of Alabama, accusing the football coach-turned-politician of not meeting 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 in a phone interview said he believes Tuberville lives in a multimillion-dollar beach home in Florida instead of a smaller home that he has listed as his residence in Auburn, Alabama.

Property tax records show the former Auburn University football coach has a home in Auburn, Alabama ,with an appraised value of $291,780 on which he claims a homestead exemption. He also has a beach home in Walton County, Florida with an estimated market value of $5.5 million, according to property records.

The Auburn house 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 removed. Both the Auburn and Florida homes appear to have recently been put in a revocable trust with Tuberville’s wife as trustee.

“It’s belittling to the average person in Alabama for him to think we believe that he’s being sincere when he says he lives at his son’s $300,000 house when he’s got a $6 million beach house. Where would 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 as a true domicile.” McFeeters said Tuberville’s travel records also show frequent travel to the Florida Panhandle, which he said buttresses the idea that he resides in the location.

Mallory Jaspers, a spokeswoman for Tuberville, 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 made-up narrative didn’t work when he was running for Senate in 2019, and it certainly isn’t going to work now,” Jaspers wrote in an email. Jaspers said the Auburn home remains the senator’s primary residence.

Tuberville faced similar accusations in his Senate campaign. Opponents called him “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 checked it out. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it was a problem,” Tuberville said. 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 run for Senate.

Jeannie Burniston, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Republican Party, said challenges are heard and decided by the party’s 21-member steering 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 cannot comment on challenges.

The awkwardly worded requirement in the Alabama Constitution says the governor and lieutenant governor “shall have been citizens of the United States ten years and resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”

McFeeters said it is important that the Republican Party take the matter seriously. He said Tuberville should be asked to provide clear evidence that he has 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 vague. She said it could be interpreted to be seven consecutive years or it could be seven years broken up by periods living elsewhere. But she said Alabama’s culture and history supports the argument that it should be seven consecutive years.

“Alabama’s culture is suspicious of outsiders and historically most of Alabama’s governors were born and raised in the state, often having been descended from generations of Alabamians,” Hamill wrote in an email. Her comments were first reported by the Alabama Reflector.