Camden native Tommy Tuberville a frontrunner for Alabama U.S. Senate seat, says opioids top priority

Camden native Tommy Tuberville, the former college coach at Auburn, Ole Miss, Texas Tech and Cincinnati, is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in the Alabama U.S. Senate race in 2020.

According to two recent polls, Tuberville leads a growing field of GOP contenders, including Roy Moore, who narrowly lost a special election to Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones in 2018.

Tuberville was capitalizing on Arkansas connections last week while in state for a couple of fundraisers.

“Somebody asked me ‘Why do you think you’d be a good senator?’ I’ve been out in public life for 40 years. I’ve been in schools, I’ve been in businesses, homes all across the country,” Tuberville said in an exclusive interview with Talk Business & Politics. “After 40 years of putting up with 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds I decided to try to put up with everybody, no matter what age.”

Tuberville was born and raised in Camden, Arkansas. He graduated from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia and spent time coaching high school and college before breaking into the big-time collegiate coaching ranks.

A supporter of President Donald Trump and many of his policies, including border security, Chinese tariffs, and opposition to impeachment, Tuberville said if he was elected, a top priority would be stopping the opioid epidemic.

“A lot of people are hurting, and one thing if we don’t stop, if we don’t stop the influx of drugs in this country we’re not going to make it. We don’t really realize how many people we’re losing,” he said. “Last year, we lost 60- to 70,000 people for overdosing on drugs. All starts at the border. Now I know all the drugs don’t come across the border, but most of them do,” he said.

Tuberville said he’s also worried about Democratic policies that he considers leaning toward socialism. He views his Senate race as more of a referendum on the president than it may be on the eventual two major party nominees.

“I think everybody’s kind of worried about the direction the country’s trying to go. President Trump’s trying to take it in one direction and we’ve got a group on the left that’s trying to take it in another direction. President Trump, to me, is really the only guy that’s standing between socialism and the United States of America. A vote for me is a vote for President Trump. I believe in what he’s doing and the things that he’s gotten accomplished. I wish they would allow him to be president instead of having to fight all the things that are coming at him from all sides. He was elected president of the United States. Let him run out his term, whether it’s one term or whether it’s two terms. I hope he gets reelected, but we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the people think,” Tuberville said.

You can watch his full interview in the video below.