The Washington Post - USA (2021-12-22)

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE K A

BY MICHAEL SCHERER

Rep. Mo Brooks leaves little
doubt about how he hopes to win
the Republican primary for Ala-
bama’s open U.S. Senate seat next
year. The words “Endorsed by
Trump” precede his name in his
campaign logo, and the same mes-
sage is printed in his Twitter han-
dle.
But eight months after receiv-
ing the former president’s highest
blessing in one of the nation’s red-
dest states, Brooks is still strug-
gling to win former president
Donald Trump’s approval behind
the scenes, and his standing has
begun to fade in the state amid
fierce competition.
As a result, Alabama is once
again set up to host one of the most
suspenseful Senate primaries in
the country, with outside groups
and candidates preparing to
spend millions in a contest that
will help shape the tone and tenor
of the Republican caucus and the
future face of conservative govern-
ance in the Deep South.
On one side of the divide is
Brooks, a Freedom Caucus fire-
brand and one of the GOP’s most
vocal supporters of overturning
the 2020 election results. On the
other is Katie Britt, a former busi-
ness association president and
former aide to retiring Sen. Rich-
ard C. Shelby (R), a giant in Ala-
bama politics who has told others
that he is willing to spend $5 mil-
lion of his own campaign funds on
her election.
The faceoff reprises historical
divisions that have long bedeviled
Republican primaries in the
South, pitting the conservative
economic development wing of
the party, exemplified by Britt and
Shelby — who has served as the
most powerful Republican Senate
appropriator since 2018 — against
a fiercer brand of conservatism,
represented by Brooks, that seeks
to disrupt the U.S. Capitol to force
more-conservative policies. It’s a
split that often has less to do with
policy positions in a state that
Trump won with 62 percent of the
vote — all the candidates in the
race are Bible-believing conserva-
tives — than style.
“It’s country club versus coun-
try,” said David Mowery, a Mont-
gomery, Ala.-based political con-
sultant who has worked for both
Republicans and Democrats.
“There is a weird dynamic where a
lot of your business folks are also
social conservatives. They just
don’t want to be gauche about it.
Wearing a .44 on your belt, a Ten
Commandments T-shirt and a tri-
corner hat is outré.”
Complicating matters further is
the late entry of a third candidate,
wealthy businessman and celebri-
ty military veteran Mike Durant,
who spent $1.2 million on ads
since mid-October months to in-
troduce himself, according to the
ad-tracking firm Medium Buying.
Before founding his defense con-
tracting business Pinnacle Solu-
tions, Durant made headlines
when his Special Forces helicopter
was shot down by Somali militia,
and he was held as a prisoner for

11 days.

Trump, a guiding light for the

rural-working-class wing of the

party, has also inserted himself as

an unpredictable influence in the

state. After Brooks spent much of

2020 warning of election theft by

Democrats, the congressman in-

gratiated himself with Trump by

helping to lead the effort to over-

turn the results and rally protest-

ers to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Today is a time of choosing,

and tomorrow is a time for fight-

ing,” he said at the rally in an

apparent call for organizing be-

fore the next election, before utter-

ing words that his critics say

helped encourage the violence at

the Capitol he has since con-

demned. “Today is the day Ameri-

can patriots start taking down

names and kicking a--,” he said.

Trump’s endorsement came a few

months later.

But trouble with Trump began

in August, when the former presi-

dent traveled to Cullman, Ala., for

a rally that was supposed to be a

boon for the Brooks campaign. At

an event coinciding with the rally,

Trump met Katie Britt and her

husband, Wesley, a 6-foot-8 for-

mer offensive tackle with the New

England Patriots. Trump came

away impressed, gushing after-

ward about Wesley having played

for the Patriots and in college for

the Alabama Crimson Tide, ac-

cording to three people who have

spoken with Trump.

“He said she looks and sounds

like a winner,” said one person

familiar with the conversations,

who like others spoke on the con-

dition of anonymity to describe a

private interaction.

Brooks compounded the new

threat by announcing from the

rally podium that his supporters

should look past their anger at

what he still contends was a stolen

2020 election. “Put that behind

you,” he said, prompting the

crowd to respond with boos and

cries of “No!”

“All right, we’ll look back at it,

but go forward and take advan-

tage of it,” Brooks then said, back-

tracking. Trump, who has priori-

tized re-litigating the last election,

made clear to those around him

that he was not happy with

Brooks’s inartful pitch.

After boasting that Brooks had

far more than 50 percent of the

primary vote in private polls, his

advisers have since become far

more somber, as other private sur-

veys have showed Britt surging

and Durant gaining attention.

Britt raised $3.8 million through

the end of September, with contri-

butions from the political opera-

tions of Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)

and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and the

recent appearance of Sen. Tommy

Tuberville (R-Ala.) at one of her

fundraisers. Durant, who got in

the race only in October, has not

yet disclosed how much he has

committed to spend.

Brooks, by contrast, has strug-

gled with money, despite the

Trump imprimatur and the pledge

of outside support from the Club

for Growth. He raised only

$1.8 million through the end of

September, and in November he

announced a shuffling of his cam-

paign team.

Rather than resetting his rela-

tionship with Trump, the new

team initially caused more ten-

sion, after Trump read news re-

ports that noted it included Fred

Davis, a former ad maker for the

late senator John McCain (R-

Ariz.), and campaign manager

Forrest Barnwell-Hagemeyer,

who had previously shared some

Trump criticism on social media.

(Barnwell-Hagemeyer countered

the reports by saying he voted

twice for Trump’s presidential

campaign.)

“He read it, and he was furious,”

one Trump confidant said of the

former president’s reaction to the

new staff.

Brooks supporters contend that

the reports of Trump’s unease are

overblown, pushed by anonymous

sources. They point out that

Trump has not backed away from

Brooks publicly, describe friendly

notes Brooks has received from

the former president and mention

continuing discussions to have

members of Trump’s family, such

as Donald Trump Jr., come to the

state to campaign.

“This race is a battle between

the America First conservative co-

alition that President Trump built,

and the same, open borders, Big

Government-Big Business coali-

tion that has controlled D.C. for

years, hates conservatives and

hates President Trump,” Stanton

McDonald, a Huntsville attorney

who chairs Brooks’s campaign,

said in a statement.

Terry Lathan, the former Ala-

bama Republican Party chair-

woman who is backing Brooks,

said she still thinks it is just a

matter of time before Republicans

learn that her candidate has

Trump’s support and unite behind

him.

“Alabama is consistently the

number-one-rated Trump state in

the nation,” Lathan said. “I am

watching people, and very often I

am asked, ‘Who is Trump for?’ ”

Hanging over the entire contest

is the memory of the chaotic 2017

special election primary for the

state’s other Senate seat. In that

contest, Trump and Republican

Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc-

Connell (R-Ky.) backed the state’s

former attorney general Luther

Strange, who had been appointed

to the vacant seat, for the Republi-

can nomination over Brooks and

former state Supreme Court judge

Roy Moore.

Strange ran a lackluster cam-

paign based largely on Trump’s

endorsement. Brooks spent heavi-

ly on television ads attacking Mc-

Connell for his support of Strange,

and a McConnell-backed group

blistered Brooks with ads that fea-

tured Brooks’s criticism of Trump

dating from the 2016 presidential

campaign. The internal fights al-

lowed Moore to win a primary

runoff, only to lose later in the

general election after accusations

surfaced that he had initiated a

sexual encounter with a 14-year-

old when he was in his 30s.

Brooks has so far avoided tar-

geting McConnell directly in his

current campaign, but his advis-

ers declined to comment on the

possibility of that changing in the

coming months. Trump has been

privately urging Republicans to

turn publicly against their Senate

leader, and Brooks dodged a direct

question about whether he would

support McConnell in a recent

interview with Politico.

“I will support the candidate for

Senate majority leader who is the

most conservative and best re-

flects the values of Alabama citi-

zens,” he said.

Britt meanwhile is trying to in-

troduce herself to the state as a

fresh face, outside the political

maw, even as she rallies the state’s

business community to her side.

Shelby’s retirement will be a major

shock to the state, which has

grown accustomed to massive fed-

eral investments for infrastruc-

ture and its aerospace industry

thanks to Shelby’s power. A 2020

report from the Officer of the New

York State Comptroller found that

Alabama gets the sixth-highest

amount per capita of federal pro-

curement dollars.

Britt has channeled this mes-

sage by declaring that she would

“put Alabama First” — a play on

Trump’s “America First” message

— “deliver results for our state and

never apologize for it.” A former

president of the Business Council

of Alabama, she has received en-

dorsements from a broad array of

trade groups in the state, includ-

ing organizations for farmers,

manufacturers, retail business

and auto dealers.

She has also made efforts to

align herself with Trump’s pol-

icies, coming out against federal

vaccination mandates for busi-

nesses, publicly supporting his

border wall and disagreeing with

McConnell’s decision to strike a

compromise with Democrats over

the debt ceiling.

Brooks has earned the ire of

some groups by criticizing the

rush for federal funding as not

conservative, and he made head-

lines in 2020 by saying that the

state’s farm lobby was “on the

opposite side of America and on

the side of the Chinese.” Britt and

Brooks have also split on the ques-

tion of the 2020 election. Whereas

Brooks has long maintained false-

ly that Trump was the rightful

victor, Britt has stopped short of

such claims, arguing instead for

new laws to protect “election in-

tegrity.”

Like Durant, she has cast her-

self as an outsider in the race,

running against Brooks’s long rec-

ord of elected leadership.

“He’s the Joe Biden of Alabama:

40 years running for office, six

terms in Congress, and nothing to

show for it but empty words and

more money in his pocket,” Britt

spokesman Sean Ross said in a

statement. “It is clear that Ala-

bamians are ready for fresh blood

to shake things up, and that’s why

he is in full meltdown mode.”

With months to go before a

May 24 primary election — not to

mention a potential June 21 run-

off — the race still has a ways to

run. Much will depend on how

committed Trump chooses to be

down the stretch to Brooks and on

how the candidates perform in a

state where retail politics can still

matter.

“You are talking about the Re-

publican primary electorate in Al-

abama, and that is a pretty yeasty

mix,” said Cal Jillson, a political

science professor at Southern

Methodist University who studies

Southern politics. “You never

know what is going to come out of

that.”

[email protected]

In Ala., Trump’s candidate struggles amid GOP civil war

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) takes the stage during an August rally in Cullman, Ala. Brooks’s campaign to fill the state’s open Senate seat

received a big boost this year when he received former president Donald Trump’s backing, but since then his support has started to wane.

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