Former Sen. Doug Jones to Run for Alabama Governor in 2026

Former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones has launched a campaign for governor of Alabama in 2026, giving Democrats a high-profile candidate in a state where they have not won statewide office in years and setting up a possible rematch with Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

The two last faced off in the 2020 U.S. Senate race, when Tuberville defeated Jones by about 20 percentage points.

Jones announced his decision in a video posted online, calling it “the worst-kept secret in the state of Alabama.”

“I am running for governor of Alabama,” he said. “Over the last few weeks and months, [my wife] Louise and I have listened to you. We have heard you, and we so much appreciate everything that people have said to us, all the encouragement that we’ve got. It’s because of you. It’s why we decided to do this.”

Jones said he is running because “Alabama, you, folks in Alabama, deserve a governor who is going to fight for them.” The campaign will focus on hearing from voters across the state, he said.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to be going around in this campaign. We’re going to be listening to people across the state. We’re going to do everything we can to bring the people back to the state capital of Montgomery, Alabama, as your governor. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Jones said the video was just a starting point and that a formal kickoff event will follow after Thanksgiving.

Party primaries are scheduled for May ahead of the November 2026 general election.

A Tuberville campaign spokeswoman said the 2020 Senate race showed Alabama voters had already rejected Jones and that the governor’s race favors the Republican. Kevin Donohoe of the Democratic Governors Association said that Democratic wins in other conservative-leaning states like Kentucky suggest a Democrat could make the contest competitive as voters focus on health care, schools, and jobs.

Last year, in an NTD “Profiles of Service” feature, Jones recounted his early career, saying that his first job out of law school was working for a U.S. senator from Alabama, which led him to “fall in love with the Senate” and its history.

He later served as U.S. attorney, where he reopened and pursued the case of the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, in which four girls were killed. “We successfully prosecuted those guys,” he said, adding that the case “changes you as a lawyer; it changes you as a person.”

In that interview, Jones said he values bipartisan work, noting that he was a lead sponsor of some 26 bills that became law. He highlighted efforts to increase funding for historically black colleges and universities, address civil rights cold cases, and repeal what he called a “military widow’s tax” that added “about $1,000 a month to a lot of pensioners and widows.” He also described starting a tradition of reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the Senate floor with both Democrats and Republicans.

Jones said public office is “public service,” not “an ego trip,” and urged people to “do it because you want to serve others, not yourself.” He called on voters to stay engaged and “vote like your life depends on it…  like your future depends on it, because it does.”

Tuberville declared his own bid for governor in May, saying he would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2026.

“I will be the future governor of the great state of Alabama,” Tuberville said. Pledging to “grow Alabama,” he said he is a football coach, a leader, a builder, and a recruiter. He said he would continue serving in the Senate while campaigning on weekends and promised to “work with President [Donald] Trump … because he’s fully supportive of this.”

Tuberville’s “Alabama First” platform, as described on his campaign website, lays out a standard conservative agenda that includes positions on “transgenderism,” taxes, tariffs on trade, border security, school choice, and the Second Amendment.

He has also stressed keeping college graduates in the state’s workforce, saying, “We’re going to do everything possible to make sure our kids, when they’ve graduated in this great state, the Yellowhammer State, that they stay in this state and work.”

Alabama’s electorate is described as one of the most conservative in the country, with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of “R+15,” and no Democrat currently holds statewide office.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.