Just as fast as Jeff Sessions announced his resignation as the United States Attorney General on Tuesday, rumors swirled that he could make a go at his old job: Senator from Alabama. And it happened at the speed of a tweet.
Sessions resigned as a 20-year Republican Senator in 2017 to take his cabinet post for newly sworn-in president Donald Trump. His vacancy created a special election and nationwide attention on a race that involved mudslinging from the Tennessee River to Mobile Bay.
Sessions, the Republican who served that spot from 1997-2017, had become one of the most-recognizable faces in the U.S. Senate. His eventual replacement turned out to be Doug Jones, a Democrat who defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore, who had sexual allegations brought to him just 33 days before the election.
The national attention led many of the state's voting Republicans to change sides for a single election, or simply abstain from voting at all, giving Jones a win by two percentage points.
Now, just one day after Republicans lost the House of Representatives but gained a couple of seats in the Senate, the GOP could gain yet another as one of their favorite sons of the South is now available — again.
Steve Flowers is a former Alabama state legislator and current political analyst whose thumbs wrote about Sessions, "He'd win easily."
Jeff Sessions should run for his old Senate seat in 2020. He’d win easily. #alpolitics
— Steve Flowers (@SteveFlowersAL) November 7, 2018
Mobile-based political strategist Jonathan Gray told AL.com he not only believed Sessions would re-win his old seat, but that rumors of Sessions leaving the cabinet for his old job started in the summer.
"Several months ago, those rumors broke out (about Sessions leaving his AG post) and then after Labor Day, there was some polling that I heard of that was questioning Jeff Sessions' favorability along with the president's favorability in a possible election toss-up against Doug Jones," Gray told AL.com.
Then, of course, there were the verbal jabs Trump and Sessions took at each other the previous 22 months. Trump has shown he can get past his differences, like he did with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who piggybacked the president to a narrow win in his Lone Star State Senate race with Beto O'Rourke this midterm cycle.
"Did they make a deal?" Gray said. "I've been doing this for 22 years and I guarantee you, they made a deal. Somebody made a handshake, somebody's getting along and I think you're going to see Jeff Sessions back on the ballot against Doug Jones in 2020."
As for Alabama folks, having Sessions back in office is probably as normal as the Crimson Tide or, ahem, War Eagle, aiming at another national title.
However, not all Alabama political observers think Sessions will remain in Washington as a Senator.
"My guess is Jeff Sessions will probably stay in Washington," said Jess Brown, a retired political scientist from Athens State University and follower of Alabama politics, on Al.com. "He's genuinely interested in the spectrum of issues the federalist society deals with. I can see him wanting to stay in the Washington arena, in social circles, but would do so through either a corporate connection or a non-profit connection.
"If you put a gun to my head, I don't think he's going to return to Alabama and return to electoral politics."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Scott McDonald is a Newsweek deputy night editor based in Cape Coral, Florida. His focus is assigning and writing stories ... Read more
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