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    Ron DeSantis Assailed the Florida State Playoff Snub. Will He Do It at Alabama?

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    An undefeated college football team out of Tallahassee, nudged out of contention in a high-stakes competition by a dominant old favorite?It makes sense that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida might have taken the plight of the Florida State Seminoles a bit personally, and why, when he takes the stage at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa for the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night, it may be especially hostile terrain.On Sunday, the College Football Playoff selection committee picked the Alabama Crimson Tide — a perennially successful team with a 12-1 record — over the unbeaten Seminoles to round out the four-team bracket that will compete for the national championship.The decision has not gone over well, prompting outrage (the Seminoles’ coach said he was “disgusted and infuriated”); existential doubt (what is an undefeated season even worth?); and conspiracy theories (including the notion that ESPN, which broadcasts the championship, and its parent company, Disney, tipped the scale against Mr. DeSantis for political retribution).Mr. DeSantis went with outrage. On Sunday, he wrote on social media: “What we learned today is that you can go undefeated and win your conference championship game, but the College Football Playoff committee will ignore these results.”On Tuesday, he said that he would ask for his proposed state budget to include $1 million for litigation expenses that might arise from what he called the College Football Playoff’s “really, really poor decision” to exclude Florida State.It did not help that former President Donald J. Trump, in criticizing the decision, took yet another opportunity to troll Mr. DeSantis by suggesting that the fault might lie with him. “Florida State was treated very badly by the ‘Committee,’” Mr. Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social. “They become the first Power Five team to be left out of the College Football Playoffs. Really bad lobbying effort…Lets blame DeSanctimonious!!!”What the selection committee did not say explicitly — but to which any Alabama students in the audience at the debate will doubtless attest — is that, on balance, it viewed Alabama as the better team: The Crimson Tide won a more challenging conference, and Florida State had lost its starting quarterback to a broken leg. (The selection committee’s rules do note that “unavailability of key players” can play into its decisions.)Put simply, the Alabama debate is not going to be an ideal venue for Mr. DeSantis to air his grievances.Fortunately for him, none of the other candidates have a particular claim to Tuscaloosa, or to teams that made the playoff. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, went to the University of Delaware but is a longtime Notre Dame fan.Vivek Ramaswamy, a Harvard graduate, is from Ohio. (Mr. DeSantis graduated from Yale, whose football team beat Harvard this year in the annual Harvard-Yale game, but didn’t find any bowl invitations in the mail.)And Nikki Haley — the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. DeSantis’s principal rival in the Republican race to supplant Mr. Trump — graduated from Clemson.Alabama’s celebrated head coach, Nick Saban — a longtime friend of Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, as it happens — does have a connection to Mr. DeSantis’s home state: He spent two unremarkable years as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins before leaving for Tuscaloosa in 2007. More

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      Alabama Is at the Center of the 4th Republican Presidential Debate

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      Republican presidential candidates will gather in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday, at a moment when the state’s politics have new resonance on the national stage.Tuscaloosa is used to having the eyes of the nation on it, especially toward the end of the year. (Suffice to say, there is no controversy in Alabama about who made the College Football Playoff, again.)Yet the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, held on the University of Alabama campus, offers the city of 113,000 a different kind of opportunity. The state has never before hosted a debate in a presidential election cycle, with organizers often eyeing swing states, early voting states or huge population centers as possible locations instead.“For a lot of people, this is going to be their rare opportunity to actually see a presidential candidate in person,” said Walt Maddox, the mayor of Tuscaloosa, adding that he had been fielding a number of ticket requests that rivaled that of a game day weekend. “In Iowa, New Hampshire, that’s a birthright,” Mr. Maddox, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor, said of seeing numerous presidential candidates. “In Alabama, that’s something that’s pretty rare.”In some ways, it is not surprising that Republicans chose to descend upon Alabama, a conservative stronghold molded in part by hard-line politicians willing to leverage its grievances and divisions. (Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has frequently reveled in the state’s loyal voter base, but he will not be a participant in the debate.)The third Republican presidential primary debate last month in Miami.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Alabama is getting more attention, especially on the conservative Republican side,” John Wahl, the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, said. “If you look for a state across the country that kind of embodies Republican principles and the values of the Republican Party, we’re a good state,” he added.But beyond the outcome of Wednesday’s debate, there are reasons national political figures are paying close attention to Alabama this election cycle.At a moment when control of the House of Representatives hinges on just a couple seats, a congressional district in Alabama is suddenly competitive. In October, a federal court ordered Alabama to use a new map that creates a second district with close to a majority of Black voters.The order came after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that the congressional map drawn by the Republican-dominated state legislature violated the Voting Rights Act. The ruling has potentially paved the way for more equitable and competitive races across the region in 2024.This month Georgia lawmakers unveiled a proposed congressional map that would create an additional majority-Black district, while the Louisiana legislature has until late January to craft a new map that complies with the Voting Rights Act.And now in Alabama, nearly two dozen candidates are now vying for the Second Congressional District, designated as the newest district where Black voters have a valid opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. (In Alabama, Black voters tend to back Democrats, increasing the odds that the party can flip the seat.)The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., will host the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday.Brian Snyder/ReutersSome Democrats said that Wednesday’s debate was a chance for them to tie criticism of Alabama’s hard-line leadership and policies to Mr. Trump and the other candidates. Democrats have already spent months hammering the state’s senior senator, Tommy Tuberville, over a monthslong, single-handed blockade of senior military promotions; on Tuesday, he agreed to drop his blockade for all but the most senior generals.“We’re a conservative state, yes, but I don’t think that we are that state where we are extreme the way that we’re seeing this with Donald Trump and so many of the other Republican leaders,” Doug Jones, a former Democratic senator and Biden ally, said. He argued that policies championed by top Republicans in Alabama — its strict abortion ban, a push to restrict certain books in libraries and an effort to curb rights for L.G.B.T.Q. youth — would make the case against Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates.But, he added, “even as a as a partisan Democrat, I am happy to see a major debate of the Republican Party coming into this state.”“It’s always good for Tuscaloosa, for the state, for the University of Alabama,” he said.Mr. Wahl said that he, too, was pleased that the debate was happening on the campus, where the Republican Party could make inroads with younger voters.“I think it gives the party a tremendous opportunity to reach out to young people to talk about the issues that are important to them and how these issues affect their lives,” he said.He also noted that the university’s own, apolitical imagery — crimson red with an elephant mascot — were fitting for a Republican debate. More

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      Scorned by Trump, Mo Brooks Rises in Alabama Senate Race

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      Mr. Brooks, a hard-right representative, seems to be making an unlikely comeback in a Senate race in which the Trump endorsement may not determine votes of Trump supporters.CLANTON, Ala. — Two months ago, Representative Mo Brooks, whose hard-right credentials were unblemished, seemed to be imploding in the Alabama Republican Senate race.Under a rain of attack ads, polls showed him falling behind two rivals. Former President Donald J. Trump humiliated Mr. Brooks by rescinding an earlier endorsement.But Mr. Brooks has staged a compelling comeback, with recent polling putting him in a statistical tie for the lead in a tight three-candidate race ahead of the primary on Tuesday.In a twist of fate, the Brooks bounce-back appears to be driven by voters who identify as “Trump Republicans” — another bit of evidence, after recent primaries from Nebraska to Pennsylvania, that the former president’s political movement may no longer be entirely under his command.“Brooks may be surging just at the right time,” a conservative talk radio host, Dale Jackson, said over the Birmingham airwaves on Friday.Mr. Brooks — who appeared at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the siege of the Capitol, where he goaded election deniers to start “kicking ass” — has returned to contention not only despite Mr. Trump’s fickleness, but also in the face of opposition by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. A super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell has funneled $2 million to a group attacking Mr. Brooks in television ads.In 12 years as an arch-conservative in the House, Mr. Brooks has bucked party leadership, which won him no fans among Senate Republican leaders. Mr. McConnell and his allies would prefer a different replacement for the open seat of Senator Richard Shelby, 88, who is retiring. Alabama’s deep-seated conservatism means that the Republican nominee is all but assured of winning in November.Katie Britt, a lawyer and former aide to retiring Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, is currently leading in polls for the seat Mr. Shelby is vacating. Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesA polling average by Real Clear Politics showed Katie Britt, a former aide to Mr. Shelby, in the lead with 34 percent, Mr. Brooks with 29 percent and Mike Durant, a military contractor and Army veteran, with 24 percent. If no candidate consolidates more than 50 percent on Tuesday, the top two advance to a runoff on June 21.“Slowly but surely, conservatives are figuring out I’m the only conservative in this race,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. He called Mr. Durant “a John McCain-type of Republican” and Ms. Britt “a Mitch McConnell-establishment, open-borders, cheap-foreign-labor, special-interest-group Republican.”A poker-faced former prosecutor, Mr. Brooks nonetheless seemed to savor, at a couple of campaign appearances on Friday, his comeback from March, when he was polling in the teens and Mr. Trump abandoned him. The former president accused Mr. Brooks of having gone “woke” because he had urged a crowd, months earlier, to put the 2020 election “behind you.”Mr. Brooks, 68, “is the least woke person in the state of Alabama,” said Terry Lathan, a former chair of the Alabama Republican Party, who is a co-chair of the Brooks campaign.In style and experience, there are strong differences between the stolid Mr. Brooks and the energetic Ms. Britt, a lawyer whose first digital ad featured her marriage to Wesley Britt, a former University of Alabama football star — no small credential in a state where the other senator, Tommy Tuberville, is a former Auburn University football coach. Ms. Britt, 40, presents herself as a committed social conservative. Campaign ads feature her calling to get “kids and God back in the classroom” and, while striding through a girls’ locker room, accusing “crazy liberals” of wanting to let boys in.A poll on Thursday for The Alabama Daily News and Gray Television showed likely voters who identified as “traditional conservative Republicans” favored Ms. Britt and Mr. Durant over Mr. Brooks.But Mr. Brooks won the support of a plurality of voters who identified as “Trump Republicans” — 35 percent, up from 26 percent in an earlier survey.The race has seen millions of dollars spent on negative ads attacking all three candidates that in many ways have shaped the turbulent peaks and valleys of their campaigns.In particular, opinions of Mr. Durant and Ms. Britt, who as first-time candidates are less well-known, have been battered by assaults over the airwaves.The anti-tax Club for Growth, which supports Mr. Brooks, has spent $6 million in the state on ads, including one barraging Ms. Britt — the former head of an Alabama business group — as “really a lobbyist” who supported a state gas tax increase. One ad flashes a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. in 2021 — back when his father still liked Mr. Brooks — calling Ms. Britt “the Alabama Liz Cheney.”The share of voters with a favorable view of Ms. Britt dropped six points in the recent Alabama Daily News poll, compared with a survey in early May.Mr. Brooks, already a known quantity, better withstood attacks and is slightly above water in terms of favorable and unfavorable opinions with voters.“The story of the numbers in a way is that everyone at this point has an image that is pretty close to the water line,” said John Rogers, a strategist for Cygnal, which conducted the Alabama Daily News polling.Mike Durant, a former Army pilot, is currently trailing the other two top contenders for the Alabama Senate seat. Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesIt is Mr. Durant, a former Army pilot who figured in the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, who seems most battered — and most upset — by the blasts of negativity on the airwaves. In March, he was leading in polls. Now he is struggling to make it into a runoff, after being accused of weakness on gun rights and fighting off a false claim that he doesn’t live in Alabama.In politics, “the only thing that matters is how much money you’ve got and how low you’re willing to go,” he said with disgust on Friday. “It’s very, very disturbing. I hope it will backfire.”Mr. Brooks’s time in the barrel took place in the spring. A super PAC favoring Ms. Britt, Alabama’s Future, dredged up clips of the congressman disparaging Mr. Trump in 2016. “I don’t think you can trust Donald Trump with anything he says,” Mr. Brooks said back then. Another outside group, calling itself No More Mo, ran an ad in the Florida media market that includes Mar-a-Lago, which blared that Mr. Brooks was “a proven loser” and “Trump deserves winners.”Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks shortly after.His stated reason was that Mr. Brooks had gone wobbly on election denialism by urging voters to focus on future races. Mr. Brooks revealed in response that Mr. Trump had pressed him for months after Jan. 6 to illegally “rescind” the 2020 election and to remove President Biden, and that he told Mr. Trump it was impossible under the Constitution.Despite the Trumpian snub, Mr. Brooks continues to falsely maintain that the election was stolen from the former president, a view widely held by Alabama Republicans.On May 12, Mr. Brooks was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. On that date, Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, had asked the roiling crowd of Trump supporters gathered near the White House, “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?” Cheers erupted. He went on: “Will you fight for America?” Not long after, the protest became a riot and the Capitol was breached.On Friday night, Mr. Brooks appeared in Clanton at Peach Park, a popular roadside fruit and ice cream stand adorned with pictures of beauty queens posing with peaches, for an outdoor screening of the movie “2000 Mules.” The film is the latest conservative effort to promote the myth of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The Georgia State Elections Board last week dismissed some claims central to the movie.“What we’re going to see tonight is a reaffirmation of what we already know,” Mr. Brooks told a sparse crowd.Awaiting the start of the film, Apryl Marie Fogel told Mr. Brooks that she had been an undecided voter, but had made up her mind to support him.Ms. Fogel is the host of “Straight Talk with Apryl Marie” on Montgomery talk radio. She told Mr. Brooks that on her show that day, “We all agreed that it’s going to be a runoff between you and Katie and that you have picked up steam.”There was speculation on air, she said, that Mr. Trump would re-endorse him.Mr. Brooks paused, his face a mask.“That would be interesting,” he allowed. More