Statewide constitutional offices are due for a major shake-up in 2026, as many top offices, including governor, are wide open with no incumbent challenger.
Alabama Republican Party chair John Wahl told "Rightside Radio" host Phil Williams Friday that Alabama will likely have the most unique election in the country next year, particularly if U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) runs for governor, as is highly anticipated.
"It looks like Tommy Tuberville is probably going to pull that trigger on the governor's race, which is really going to make things interesting, both there with an open governor's race, but then also opening up the U.S. Senate race," Wahl said. "And like we were talking about the other night, literally every single constitutional office in the state of Alabama will be an open seat except for state treasurer. So, quite the dynamic year for primaries here in Alabama."
He continued, "There's several states that have a lot of openings, but no, Alabama is definitely unique in that full spectrum. And like I was saying, not even just the constitutional office, but add an open Senate seat to that. Right now, there are no other states, not even in the southern region. I don't think there's any other states in the country that have the complete lack of incumbency that Alabama is going to have in 2026."
Wahl said he expected a lively and crowded primary, which means ALGOP may have to hold hearings to determine who is worthy to run on the Republican ticket.
"The party has not always been as strong on that as we are now," he said. "You know, once Democrats saw Republicans take such a stronghold here in 2010, there were a lot of Democrats who just switched parties or chose to run as a Republican instead of running as a Democrat. And that's where these rules kind of grew out of… If you've been a Democrat, if you voted as a Democrat, if you've endorsed Democrats, run as a Democrat, or maybe given money to a Democrat candidate, you can't just come in and run as a Republican. That's not how the system is supposed to work.
"Republicans are supposed to run as Republicans. Democrats are supposed to run as Democrats. And I think it's incredibly important for states like Alabama to have that and to put these rules into place, especially when we don't have closed primaries and we have Democrats voting in the Republican primary. It makes it all the more important that we make sure the candidates who run are actually Republicans."
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