Tommy Tuberville Tells Mobile Rally Trump ‘Loves This State,’ Pledges to Use Friendship as Governor

MOBILE, Ala. — U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Republican nominee for governor, told a packed arena in Mobile on Friday that President Donald Trump “loves this state” and said he intends to lean on that relationship during the president’s remaining two years in office if voters send him to Montgomery.

Tuberville, a Republican from Auburn, was among the final speakers to warm up the crowd at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center before Trump arrived. In a wide-ranging speech, he talked about his father’s military service, the border, education, workforce training, farming and shipbuilding in the Port City, and he closed with a call for Republicans to stop taking elections for granted.

“I’ve been excited and proud to have represented you for the last six years in the United States Senate,” Tuberville said. “We’re all here tonight because we love our state, we love our country. I can’t say the same for the Democrats or RINOs and the mainstream media.”

“Why do they hate our way of life? I just don’t understand. Why do they hate our president? I still don’t understand,” he said.

Military service and national security

Tuberville spent part of his remarks on the military, beginning with his own family’s history.

“My dad was career military. Landed in Normandy at age 17,” Tuberville said, before drawing a laugh with a self-deprecating aside: “Well, I couldn’t get out of bed at 17.”

“If we lose our military, we lose it all because they protect our national security,” he said.

During the same portion of his speech, Tuberville argued that Democrats and what he called the “deep state” had tried to undermine the armed forces. “Transgenders. In the military. Embarrassing,” he said. “Woke generals and admirals. Folks, we’re being infiltrated, and they tried to do it even more.”

Praise for Trump on the border and drugs

Tuberville described Trump’s return to the White House as a comeback against long odds.

“They tried to lock him up, and they tried to kill him. Now, against all odds, this man fought hard when he didn’t have to to win back the White House,” Tuberville said of the president. “He closed the borders.”

Tuberville said the country was “losing 100,000 Americans a year” to drugs under former President Joe Biden.

“We love people, but we want to take care of our people first,” he said.

Education, workforce development and the Port City

Tuberville, who spent decades in college athletics before entering politics, framed education as a central theme of his campaign for governor.

“I was in it for 35 years: education. They tried to destroy our kids through woke ideas, DEI, social justice, and the government controlling your kids and not you,” Tuberville said. “Bull crap.”

He tied his education message to job training and to Mobile’s maritime economy. “We’re getting ready to open up shipbuilding in this port here in Mobile, Alabama,” Tuberville said. “As your governor, we’re going to train people. Every kid does not need to go to a four-year school. We’re going to use our hands.”

Elsewhere in his speech, he expanded on the idea. “We’re going to have workforce development. We’re going to teach our kids. We’re going to have education, but we’re going to teach them how to live life. How to do things with their hands. Do things that make a difference,” he said.

Shipbuilding has long been one of the anchors of the Mobile-area economy, with shipyards along the Mobile River producing vessels for the U.S. Navy, the Coast Guard and commercial customers. Trump, in his own remarks later Friday, said his administration had committed $30 billion to revitalize shipbuilding in Alabama and pointed to work on Coast Guard ships in Mobile.

‘He loves this state’

Tuberville’s most direct pitch to voters was his relationship with the president and what it could mean for Alabama.

“He, in his first year and a half, has given the state of Alabama 30 or $40 billion,” Tuberville said. “He loves this state.”

“He’s a good friend of mine. He’s a good friend of our family, and we’re going to use him like that for the last two years,” he said of Trump.

Tuberville also raised agriculture, a major industry across rural Alabama. “We got a lot of work to do in this state. We need to help our farmers,” he said. “They want all the food coming from overseas.”

“We have to be self-sufficient, and President Trump will talk about that tonight,” Tuberville said.

He insisted his run for governor is not about climbing another rung on the political ladder. “I’m running to help. I’m not running for another job. I want to come home and help this state get bigger and better,” he said.

A warning about Democratic leaders

Tuberville urged the crowd to treat the election as a turnout contest.

“Get your family and bring out the vote. If the Republicans across this country would go out and vote, it would be a landslide. But people take it for granted,” he said.

Referring to Democratic leaders in Washington, Tuberville said: “They want to change it into a society that just gives out things. You don’t work. We’re going to give you a little program here or there. You just vote for us and put us back in power, and that’s not going to happen.”

“Stand up for him, pray for him, put God in your heart and back in the United States of America’s heart, and we will make it stronger and stronger,” he said.

On stage with the president

Trump returned the praise repeatedly during his own speech. “When you vote 32 days from now, you’re going to elect Tommy Tuberville as governor,” the president said. “Tommy was a great coach, he was a great senator, and he’s going to be a great governor.”

Trump also credited Tuberville with an announced relocation of offices of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae from San Francisco to Birmingham, calling it “huge.”

Later, Trump called Tuberville back to the stage. “The best president in my lifetime, and the best golfing president in my lifetime. I want to thank him for coming here tonight; he could have gone somewhere else,” Tuberville said. “Mr. President, we’re going to stay behind you 110 percent.”

Trump also took aim at Tuberville’s opponent, former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, calling him a “radical” and a “loser.” “When (Doug) Jones was in office, he voted for open borders, he voted for transgender inclusion,” Trump said. “He’s trying to claw his way back after you already fired him.”

The race for governor

Tuberville won the Republican nomination for governor in a landslide in May. He is running to succeed Gov. Kay Ivey, who is term-limited, and faces Jones, the Democratic nominee, in the Nov. 3 general election. Tuberville remains favored in the race, though Jones has run a strong campaign.

The matchup is a rematch of sorts. Tuberville, the former head football coach at Auburn University, unseated Jones in the 2020 U.S. Senate race. Jones had won the seat in a 2017 special election.

Jones did not attend the Mobile rally. Instead, he held his own events in the area on Friday, including a town hall across the bay in Baldwin County. He described Trump’s visit as a sign that Republicans are worried. “We’re scaring the hell out of them,” Jones said in an interview. “They think Alabama is a firewall. Now they’ve got to protect a firewall. Well, it’s not a firewall anymore.”

Ahead of the rally, Tuberville told reporters, “It’ll be a big day for Mobile, Baldwin, Mobile County, and the state of Alabama.”

Tolls on the new I-10 bridge

The rally came on the same day state and federal officials broke ground on the $3.2 billion Mobile River Bridge and Bayway, the largest transportation project in Alabama history. The project is expected to carry tolls, a point Tuberville has criticized.

In an interview earlier in the week, Tuberville said the planned tolls make him “sick” and that, if elected governor, he intends to fight to lower or possibly eliminate them. “I despise tolls,” he said Wednesday. “I hate them because we have to pay all these taxes; why should we have to pay tolls?”

Commuters between Mobile and the Eastern Shore, as well as through traffic on I-10, are likely to watch that issue closely as the project moves from groundbreaking into construction.

Who is on the ballot

Alabama voters will decide several statewide races on Nov. 3, including:

• Governor: Republican Tommy Tuberville vs. Democrat Doug Jones
• U.S. Senate: Republican U.S. Rep. Barry Moore vs. Democrat Everett Wess, a Birmingham attorney, for the seat Tuberville is leaving
• Lieutenant governor: Republican nominee John Wahl, a former state party chairman
• U.S. House, including the closely watched 2nd Congressional District race between state Rep. Rhett Marques and U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, and the 1st District race between former U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl and Democrat Clyde Jones

Polls in Alabama are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, and voters must present an approved photo ID. Residents can confirm their registration and polling place through the Alabama Secretary of State’s office or their county board of registrars.

Trump’s stop in Mobile was part of a broader tour of Republican-leaning states before the midterm elections; the president has said he plans to visit 35 locations in the month leading up to Election Day.