When Doug Jones was campaigning for the U.S. Senate he maintained the entire time that he would go to Washington, D.C., and work with both Democrats and Republicans to create a bi-partisan Congress to move the nation forward.
The eyes of the nation were focused on Alabama with Democrat Jones facing Republican Roy Moore in a runoff. Alabama had not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 25 years and most of the so-called political experts had predicted that the winner of the Republican primary would waltz into the seat. At the time there were no Democrats holding statewide offices in Alabama.
But Moore was the weak link in the GOP chain and Jones pulled off the victory. We can argue until the cows come home on whether or not the vote was for Jones or against Moore. It really doesn't matter. People will go to the polls and vote against somebody before they go to the polls to vote for somebody.
Give Jones and his election staff credit. They knew Alabama was a Republican stronghold with very conservative beliefs.
Had Jones grabbed the coat tails of such Democrats as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and run a left wing agenda campaign Moore would have likely won that election.
On more than one occasion Jones talked about being his own man and saying he would go to Washington to work for the betterment of the state. He wasn't going to Washington to be a puppet of the Democratic Party and be pulled by strings.
During the campaign he came over as a moderate and that stance appealed to the voters. Part of the problem we have in Washington is too many of our elected congressmen tend to vote strictly down party lines. I guess they do that to stay in good graces with their party leaders who have a big say in what committees the congressmen serve on.
I had someone tell me a few weeks before the runoff between Moore and Jones that if Moore won, we'd find out what the lowest and most insignificant committees were in the U.S. Senate; probably committees we've never heard of.
Once the special election was over, all eyes quickly turned to 2020 when that Senate seat will be up for a full-term election. The so-called political experts were saying Jones' victory was not a sign that Alabama was turning more Democratic. They were saying Jones caught the perfect political storm to carry him to victory and that he would likely lose to the Republican nominee in 2020.
It was a political storm that allowed Republican nominee Guy Hunt to defeat Democrat Bill Baxley in the governor's race and the state has been leaning more and more Republican since then.
I agree that Jones' victory is not a mandate, but it did show that people are getting a little sick and tired of party-line politics. Donald Trump is the perfect example – he wasn't a politician and the people liked that trait.
I had stated that if Jones goes to Washington and strictly follows the Democratic agenda he wouldn't stand a chance in 2020. Alabama is still a very conservative state. People will be watching Jones' votes very closely.
Within the past week, Jones showed he was no political puppet when he sided with Republicans to vote for a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. The first vote failed last week on a 50-49 vote with Jones voting in favor of the bill. The Senate then voted 66-32 Monday to pass the spending bill with Jones again voting in favor of the measure.
He said it wasn't a Republican vs. Democrat issue, it was an American issue. He said he supported the bill because it allocated $2.85 million for the Children's Health Insurance Program and $750 million for diabetes programs and community health issues. Both were issues he supported during the campaign.
The vote on the spending bill was politics 101 with Democrats saying they would not support the bill unless it included language dealing with immigration, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
The Republicans didn't blink and the bill failed and the government went into shutdown at midnight Friday. Republicans quickly began blaming the Democrats and the strategy worked. They went back to work Monday and passed the stop-gap spending bill with the promise they would address immigration.
Bottom line is that Jones did what he said he was going to do when he went to Washington and voted on how he felt the bill would better serve the residents of Alabama. If Jones continues to represent the state in that method, he will be hard to beat in 2020.
