PELHAM, AL – Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) raised questions about the loyalties of Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), one of his chief primary opponents in this month’s special election for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Strange has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by McConnell. That group has reportedly spent millions of dollars in pro-Strange advertising, some of which has been very critical of Brooks and the field’s other frontrunner, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Brooks argued those dollars spent on Strange’s behalf will make Strange beholden to McConnell should Strange go on to win the election.
“Well, it’s quite clear that Luther Strange, if he wins, will be because of loyalties to Mitch McConnell,” Brooks said in an interview with Breitbart News after a candidate forum hosted by the Shelby County, AL Republican Party. “Kentucky already has two senators. They don’t need a third.”
“Alabama needs a second senator, and I don’t want going to Washington, DC a person who has mixed loyalties, where he is beholden to Mitch McConnell because Mitch McConnell has poured millions of dollars into the effort to buy this Senate seat from the state of Alabama,” he added.
Brooks, Strange, Moore and six other candidates are competing for the Republican Party’s nod for this special election.
If none of the candidates can surpass the 50 percent threshold in the GOP primary on August 15, the two top finishers will face off in a primary runoff on September 26. That winner will face the eventual Democratic Party nominee in the special election on December 12.
Strange currently occupies the seat because of an appointment in February by then-Gov. Robert Bentley after Sessions was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be attorney general.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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