Former Auburn Football coach Tommy Tuberville won’t step into the political arena. A top aide, Tripp Skipper, who was assisting with Tuberville’s exploratory campaign confirmed to The Plainsman Tuesday that he had decided against running for Alabama governor.
“After a lot of thought and prayer, he just felt like the timing wasn’t right,” Skipper said. “He decided to forgo the race to pursue other opportunities.”
Tuberville, who recently finished up a three-year stint as the head football coach at the University of Cincinnati, said in February that he was considering a run for governor in Alabama. He had not made a final decision at that time.
Tuberville had been on a listening tour for the past few weeks, hearing Alabamians’ concerns and gauging whether a run for the state’s highest office would be right for him.
“If I’m the guy that can make lives better for the people of Alabama, then I’m going to run and I’m going to win,” Tuberville said earlier this month in an interview with The Plainsman.
Tuberville decided this week that he wasn’t the right guy.
“Basically too many negatives for this thing to add up to being a positive,” Tuberville told the Montgomery Advertiser. “I think I could’ve gone through legal channels to get the residency issue solved but my family wasn’t wild about the idea either.”
Tuberville, who just recently moved back to his Lake Martin home, could have faced legal battles over establishing his residency, which is a legal requirement to run for statewide political office.
Late last month, Tuberville filed paperwork establishing his principal campaign committee.
Later in the week, Tuberville filed a campaign finance disclosure that showed he loaned himself $100,000 for his gubernatorial campaign, according to campaign finance records.
Such a loan is not uncommon for major candidates, and Tuberville warned that the campaign filing nor the loan should have been taken as a final decision.
“I basically loaned myself some money so that we could get a few people to look at it in the right way, to travel, to listen, to learn,” Tuberville said. “That’s all that was.”
Under his leadership at Auburn, the Tigers had an 85-40 record — one of the most successful in Auburn history.
After leaving Auburn in 2008, Tuberville coached at Texas Tech and then moved on to Cincinnati. In a state characterized by its devotion to football and college athletics, it could have taken a lot of convincing to get Alabama fans on board with the guy who had a 7-3 record against the Crimson Tide during his time at Auburn.
If Tuberville had decided to run for governor, he would likely have faced off against now-Gov. Kay Ivey, who recently ascended to the post after former Gov. Robert Bentley resigned following a sex-tinged scandal with a top aide. At the time Tuberville began considering his run, Bentley was still governor and would have been term limited.
Ivey has not said whether she will pursue re-election in 2018, but if she does, she will be an incumbent and would likely be the Republican Party's nominee.
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