U.S. Senate candidate Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL05) spoke to voters in Rainbow City at the Western Sizzlin Restaurant.
“Elections are about choices and choices are about differences,” Brooks told the crowd. “With me you have gotten a 40-year voting record to show where I stand.”
Brooks suggested that voters should be less certain about major primary opponents Katie Boyd Britt and Mike Durant.
“If you are a Lincoln Project never Trumper kind of Republican, you ought to vote for Mike Durant,” Brooks said. “If you are a special interest kind of Republican, you ought to vote for Katie Britt; but if you are a conservative Republican who is committed to the principles upon which this nation was founded, you should vote for me.”
Brooks was asked why he was running for the office rather than remaining in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Republicans have lost every substantive floor vote since 2019 in the House where a simple majority rules,” Brooks said. “The rules of the Senate, with the filibuster, makes it a lot easier to kill bad legislation. If you elect me to Senate, I am going to try to kill a lot of bad things.”
The special committee on Jan. 6 recently asked Brooks and two other Republican Congressmen to appear and testify about their roles in the Jan. 6 events. Brooks has refused, along with other Republicans. 1819 News asked Brooks if there were conditions under which he would testify.
Brooks told 1819 News that he would be perfectly willing to testify provided that it be done after the Republican primary, that it be open to the public and the press, and that he be questioned by actual members of Congress and not staffers and also that he be allowed to address why people were angry about the November 2020 election.
Brooks said that the committee could have asked him to testify three months ago, eight months ago, or a year ago, but they chose two weeks before his Senate primary in order to try to take him off the campaign trail.
Brooks said he would need three days to review his notes and prepare his statement, so testifying now would take him off of the campaign trail for four days or more.
Brooks has dismissed the committee as a “political witch hunt.”
Brooks lamented that Congress never investigated allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“In the House, we had zero investigative hearings on voter fraud – Nancy Pelosi (the Speaker of the House) made sure of that,” Brooks said. “In the Senate, they had one hearing and that was by Sen. Ron Johnson.”
Brooks said that Mike Durant and Katie Britt did not make any contribution to the effort to fund or support the investigation of the 2020 election results.
“Now they are Johnny-come-lately opponents of voter fraud,” Brooks said. “I don’t know of anything that they did and I was the leader of the fight in the United States Congress.”
Brooks told the audience that while he has served many years in Congress, on the Madison County Commission, and in the state legislature, most of his elected experience prior to his election to Congress in 2010 has been part-time, so he has had to work while serving most of that time.
“The bulk of my income has come from my litigation cases, usually businesses suing other businesses,” Brooks said.
Brooks marveled at how the Republican Party has grown over his career.
“We were outnumbered 136 (Democrats) to 4 (Republicans) when I started in the legislature,” Brooks said.
Now the Alabama GOP has every statewide elected office, supermajorities in both Houses of the legislature and eight of Alabama’s nine-member congressional delegation in Washington.
Lillie Boddie, Britt, Brooks, Karla Dupriest, Durant, and Jake Schafer are all running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.
Will Boyd, Brandaun Dean, and Lanny Jackson are all running for the Democratic nomination for Senate.
Both primaries are on May 24. The two nominees will face each other in the Nov. 8 general election.
To connect with the author of this story, or to comment, email brandon.moseley@1819News.com.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
