When Sen. Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination at the end of February 2016 — before any consensus candidate had emerged — Alabama was an outlier among early endorsers. Two days later, state voters backed him up: Trump rolled to a record-breaking March 1 primary win in Alabama at roughly a 3-to-1 margin, drawing more than 860,000 primary voters.
That combination of an early endorsement and overwhelming primary support earned Alabama a front-row seat and a marquee role at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where Sessions formally nominated Trump for president. State GOP chairwoman Terry Lathan opened the nomination with a nod to both sides of the state’s football rivalry.
“It’s great to have them in a front-row seat,” Sessions said in an interview on the convention floor, minutes before Trump accepted the nomination. “It was those two big rallies that Trump had in Alabama that were stunning. I think both of them helped. The first one was in Mobile last August and then Huntsville had one that I endorsed him at.”
Sessions pointed to the enormous crowds at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile and later at Madison City Stadium outside Huntsville as proof of Trump’s unusual pull in the state.
A break from convention history
The prominence was a first for a state that had spent recent cycles backing runners-up. In 2008, Alabama went for Mike Huckabee; in 2012, it chose Rick Santorum. Without electoral leverage or headline endorsements, the delegation was seated far from the action in both Tampa and Minneapolis.
“By the Alabama delegates, their response to me — a lot of them, they are loving it,” said Lathan, a seven-time convention attendee. “This is a little bit out of our pattern, to tell you the truth. Alabama went with the eventual nominee of the party… That was a record-breaking primary we had on March 1. We had over 860,000 primary voters. I mean, that’s not an accident. That’s a message.”
Trump’s strength in Alabama came despite most of the state’s Republican establishment lining up elsewhere: Gov. Robert Bentley backed John Kasich, Rep. Mike Rogers supported Jeb Bush, and 31 state legislators endorsed Marco Rubio. Sessions’ early bet, ratified by voters, is what put the Yellowhammer State center stage in Cleveland.