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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to a special Devil's Cut edition of Truth in the barrel. I'm Amy McGrath. This week we're talking with Doug Jones, a former senator, civil rights attorney from Alabama. He's currently running for governor there. We're going to talk about the Voting Rights act, why he's running for governor, and if his opponent, Tommy Tuberville, actually lives in the state that he wants to lead. Enjoy, everyone. Doug, great to see you.
- [00:22]
B
It's great to see you. It's been a long time. I know you've been busy. We've all been busy. I. It's not an easy job trying to save democracy these days, Amy.
- [00:32]
A
It's not. And stepping into the political fray is very hard thing to do, but we need good people to do it. And so I'm certainly thankful that you are in the fray that you're running down there in Alabama for governor. Boy, we really need you.
- [00:48]
B
Well, I appreciate that. I will say it's pretty exciting. It was not an easy decision to get back into this ring, but. But they're just things worth fighting for, as you know. But it's pretty exciting. There's a lot happening, I think, in Alabama and throughout the south, really. That's just. I think it's exciting for a lot of folks.
- [01:09]
A
Well, it is exciting, but there's also some things that are going on that are kind of take us all back a little bit. And one of the things that's happened recently is the Supreme Court case that guts completely the Voting Rights Act. And I want to ask you about Alabama because this really affects your state a lot. Can you talk about how we got here and why this is so important for Alabama and our country right now? Yeah.
- [01:39]
B
You know, I appreciate you talking about this, because Alabama truly is probably has always been ground zero for voting rights and the Voting Rights act, whether you go back to Jim crow in the 1960s, in 1965, the settlement of Montgomery and Bloody Sunday and John Lewis getting beaten as he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which really was the impetus for, I think, the passage of the Voting Rights act in 1965. And if you think about that, it's pretty amazing that it took the country from 1776 to. To 1965 to give full democracy, full voting rights for a huge segment of the American population and especially a large segment of the population in the south after the great migration down South. And so what we've now seen, though, over the years and the strides that have been made, then all of a sudden things started to change. What was interesting About Alabama is that just three years ago, in 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld lower court ruling, which by the way, came from two of the three judges were Trump appointees that I voted for confirmation on, but they were Trump appointees that said that the state's maps that the state of Alabama drew following the 2020 census were drawn to intentionally discriminate against black Alabamians. Intentionally discriminate. And in 2023, the Supreme Court said, you cannot do that. It violates not just the Voting Rights act, but the Constitution. So the court imposed some new lines that a special master had drawn. It gave Alabama a second district where black Alabamians had an opportunity to elect someone of their choosing. And they did. Shamari figures was elected. So now the congressional delegation from Alabama reflected the population of Alabama about, you know, just 27, 28% black. Two out of the seven congressional districts. Well, lo and behold, now we see the Calais decision coming out of Louisiana that said, oh, you really can't use race in that way. And so people have to start using a different test. That's the decision that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act. And, Amy, what you saw was just almost every state in the old Confederacy rushing to change their district lines and go back. And Alabama did that. Within 48 hours, they're back in a special session. The governor called a special session. The legislature passed the very same district lines that the court ruled was intentionally discriminatory. Ruled that way again in an emergency injunction. But this time the Supreme Court says, oh, it's okay, even though you're only literally days away from the election, our primary, and people had already started voting. We're just going to nullify all of those votes. So Alabama now has new district lines that the court has said intentionally discriminates against a huge segment of the Alabama population. And that's the districts that we've got to run in right now. Tennessee did the same thing. What was fascinating to me is that South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia said, yeah, you know what? We're just not going to go back. We're just not going to run back to the old Confederacy that way. We'll just let Alabama and Tennessee take the lead. So we've got now a situation in Alabama where I think folks are beginning to realize that this legislature, this governor, and this Supreme Court have just thrown us back to an era that we all thought we had outgrown, that we thought we had gotten better and that we didn't and put it behind us. We. We're right Back in the thick of it now, and we've got to fight for voting rights in the state of Alabama once again.
- [05:38]
A
What changed, Doug? I mean, did the makeup of the Supreme Court change from the previous ruling?
- [05:47]
B
You know, the makeup didn't change. And in fact, Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh voted to uphold Section 2 of the Voting Rights act in 2023 in the Alabama case, they flipped this time. Now, Justice Roberts has never been a fan of the Voting Rights act since his days in the Reagan Justice Department. He's never been a fan of the Voting Rights Act. But what I think seems to have changed was the philosophy of the majority, six member majority of the Supreme Court. And that is that the ends justify the means. Let's figure out what we want as a result, and we'll figure out how to get there. And they succumbed to all of the gerrymandering. The House was going to flip to Democrats, so they were basically enabling the Republican Party to try to get as many districts as possible. I really believe that it was a move among the Supreme Court to the ends justify the means rather than a shift. In America, our legislature has always been that way. I mean, in Alabama and in some of these other states, particularly in the South. But what is shift is now that they had a Supreme Court that let the law just fall by the wayside. They let the outcome drive what the law is supposed to be. That's what I really believe. And that for me as a lawyer of a long time now, that is somebody that has always tried to uphold the rule of law, even though I may have not agreed with the current interpretations. It's painful for me to see the institution of the Supreme Court be politically driven rather than rule of law driven.
- [07:28]
A
I'm not a lawyer, but to me, it's like this is about power over democracy, small D democracy. I mean, I look at America and I think this is a place where people should be represented and they should be represented in the numbers that exist.
- [07:50]
B
Yes.
- [07:51]
A
You know, if black Americans are a certain percentage of the population, they should have that type of representation. We should be trying to do things to make that happen. This is about power.
- [08:04]
B
It is. It's solely about power. And I totally agree with you that the whole piece of the Voting Rights act was not just remember the Voting Rights act did things too. Like it did away with the poll tax, it did away with literacy tests, those kind of things. But it significantly was what the Voting Rights act did was to give the ability of people to go to court initially in a preclearance way under Section five. Then just in a lawsuit, to protect their right, not just their ability to go down and register to vote, but to have that vote heard so that our members of Congress, the congressional delegation, our members in our local House and Senate and even local races would reflect the population of that particular area of that particular state no longer. Now they're basically saying it's a winner take all, and it's all about political power. And you know, Amy, I was talking to a group the other day, and I made the point. I asked the folks in this group, and there was probably 100 or so folks in there. I said, how many people in this room are older than the age of 61? And there was several. There was quite a few. But most everybody raised their hand when I said, how old are. If you're under the age of 60, 61 or younger, raise your hand two thirds of the group. I said, for those of you who have lived in the United states and are 61 years and younger, you have never lived in a United States of America that discriminated on the basis of race when it comes to votes. You've never had a problem going to register to vote. You've never had a problem with the ability to go to court if your vote was not being heard and you were not being represented. And guess what? You have taken those votes for granted. You have said, well, it's just a vote. It's raining today. I may not vote. I may not exercise that right to vote. When you've been given something like this and it's been handed to you, you tend to take it for granted. And we've taken it for granted. And guess what? Now it is not there. It is not there in the state of Alabama, at least as far as the representation. And people. Just when you make things personal like that, it all of a sudden comes home. And I think people are upset about this and they're upset. And it's not just the black folks in Alabama that are upset. No one wants to go back to the days of Alabama where we saw fire hoses and dogs and children getting killed in churches.
- [10:42]
A
Yeah. Oh, well, it's so important for Alabama and for these other states really to be thinking about this and talking about it and making sure that we not allow this to happen in your race. You talk about restoring faith in government, and I hear this a lot in Kentucky people, they believe there's a lot of corruption. They believe that their voice doesn't matter. There's not a lot of faith. There might be Some faith in local government. And people tend to see the local government a little bit differently than the national government. The national government for so many people is just. It's way out of. Out of people's leagues. How do we restore this? How do we rebuild this?
- [11:25]
B
You know, I think to me, what we're trying to do is we're trying to just put a spotlight on the problems that that lack of transparency and that lack of voice creates. Alabama is a great example of that. Our legislature, you know, we've got super majorities, and so everything is decided behind closed doors. You know, in the legislature, the caucuses will meet and the Republican caucus will come out. They will have bills that have been prepared for them by some think tank, some heritage foundation or the other group out in the West. I forget even where it is, or a group here in Alabama that prepare them to fit a political agenda rather than what's best for the people. And they give it to these folks. They have no clue what they're really doing, and they just come out and vote on it. The hearings don't really matter. Everything is baked in. The legislative arguments don't matter. The outcome is baked in a governor here that is just going to rubber stamp whatever the super majority in the legislature does, which fortunately you don't have in Kentucky. And that's been a really bright spot in the south in America. And so people do lose faith when they see things that are going on in the legislature and all these bills passing that do not affect their kitchen table issues, that do not affect their gasoline, their health care, their electricity bills. None of that affects them. They're more concerned with, you know, this legislature actually tried to pass a bill to give a tax holiday that you could go buy guns and not pay sales tax on it. I mean, it's just crazy. We've got a wacky tax system. They're taking federal, they're taking state tax dollars out of public education and giving them to private schools and people and private school and our public schools are suffering because of it. That's why people just don't think about it. But they haven't had a spotlight shine on it. And that's what we're trying to do here. And I think that there was a movie you may have seen called the Alabama Solution that really put a spotlight on the Alabama prison system and that all of a sudden got people talking that this is the kind of crap that's going on across state government, that we need to have more transparency. That's how we have more of a voice if we have more transparency. And that's why I think the campaign, our campaign and the choices that we're giving with other candidates is really resonating in Alabama.
- [14:00]
A
And you've also spoken out about the election process itself. You talk about the fact that, you know, maybe, maybe we shouldn't have closed primaries. You know, we have, we have a closed primary here in Kentucky. I'm not a huge fan of that. But you've also talked about supporting ending straight ticket voting. Yes, I think is genius. Actually make people think when where they vote.
- [14:28]
B
Yeah. To the person, you know, we're fortunate right now. Even though the Republicans in the legislature tried to get, you know, pass a bill for closed primaries and making people register, which would effectively disenfranchise so many independents that really don't identify with a party that do vote according to the candidate. And fortunately that bill failed. I think there were some even folks in the Republican Party that saw that that would not be good. But then there is the straight ticket voting that we have. We're one of only five states there. You can check one box and vote for every candidate on the.
- [15:07]
A
Kentucky's one of those states too.
- [15:08]
B
Oh my God, it's unbelievable. It is just the lazy way of doing things. It is not even little D democracy. It is nothing democratic about that. And we have proposed trying to do away with that so that folks really will take a voice. You could still vote for every Republican or every Democrat, but at least you would be voting for a name and understanding what that candidate stood for. Because there may be some folks in that political party that you don't particularly like and you don't particularly want for whatever reason. And it will at least give you the option. You could even write in somebody if you didn't like the other side either. But right now with the straight ticket voting, it is just, I think it just flies in the face of what we should be doing as citizens and conscientious Americans to vote for issues and vote for the candidates that best represent what you say. Now that can be a political party on occasion. And I have nothing, I don't have any problem with party loyalists. That's not the point. The point is options. The point is choices. The point is making sure people understand the differences and not taking somebody's word for it in a social media 30 second sound bite doing a little homework. And so we're looking at that and quite frankly, we've got a great ticket here. Amy, I gotta tell you, I'm so proud of the fact that one of the things that we did in Alabama, right, when I announced for a couple of months, is really recruit candidates. And this is the first time since 2006 that we have choices. Democrats have choices in every one of our constitutional offices. We haven't done that in 20 years. And so it means a lot, I think, for the state for people to have those choices and for folks to, you know, look at that, appreciate that, and then weigh those choices before they cast that ballot.
- [17:15]
A
And it's. And it's also huge to have somebody like yourself at the top of the ticket, you know, for.
- [17:21]
B
For.
- [17:22]
A
For Alabama and for everybody below you, because that. That, you know, is really important. So somebody strong who's running a strong campaign, that. That's going to be huge, I think, for your state. And you talked a lot about lowering costs for Alabama families. But how's health care in Alabama?
- [17:40]
B
You know, look, health. Healthcare is still probably. I still think health care is the driving issue for a lot of folks. It is the probably biggest issue I think people face. You know, they don't always vote that way on that issue, but it is the biggest issue. And we're going to talk about it because we. We're one of the states that did not expand Medicaid. We're losing rural hospitals. We're even losing hospitals now, like in Montgomery, which is not a rural county. It's our state capital in Montgomery. We're about to lose a hospital right there in Montgomery, literally within blocks of our state capitol and our legislature who refused to help out, but we didn't expand Medicaid. And now with the, you know, people like Tommy Tuberville and others that voted against extending the ACA subsidies, we now have more people that are uninsured because they fall into that coverage gap. They make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid since we didn't expand. And we've got really restrictive requirements, but they don't make enough money to purchase adequate health insurance. And that costs the state billions of dollars. It causes families to have to take their kids to the emergency rooms for routine medical care. And these hospitals are bound to accept them and treat them. Taxpayers end up paying for that one way or another. It causes rural hospitals to close, doctors to flee the state, nurses to flee the state, people. And you can't imagine the number of maternal health issues that that creates because so many moms, so many pregnant women have to travel 50, 60 miles to get health care for their, you know, their. Their pregnancy. And it puts them at risk. And so that's a Big issue. So that we're talking about trying to expand Medicaid, do everything that we can to lower health care cost because that also drives the economy in a poor state like Alabama that has. We're a poor state, we're an unhealthy state. So Medicaid dollars and those federal dollars coming in is a big driver not just for our personal health outcomes, but also for the economic health of the regions in the states. It's a big deal. So that's a big part of the campaign.
- [20:06]
A
It should be. And it all is interconnected. You know, the economy, businesses often do not want to come to places that don't have the infrastructure and a workforce that's healthy, ready to go, educated, that kind of stuff. And, and it's, it all matters. I want to ask you about a couple more things. Your opponent, Tommy Tuberville, does, does he, does he really live in Alabama?
- [20:32]
B
No, of course he doesn't. Everybody knows that now. You know, there's a, there's an interesting lawsuit that got filed as they call a core warrant, a lawsuit. So ultimately there will be a court that will figure some of this out one way or another or either they won't, they'll just kind of rope a dope it until the election somehow, which is an old Kentucky Muhammad Ali term, rope a dope. So. But everybody knows he hardly spends any time in Alabama. He's never done that since he was moved to Florida after his coaching career. He's claimed it. And you know, Amy, it's not just a question of rule of law. We go back to the Voting Rights act and the rule of law and things like that. This is a constitutional requirement. So that's important. But it's also a question of trust. It's a question of being honest with the people of Alabama about what you really care about and who you really are. If you have to make up stuff to try to show that you're actually living in Alabama when you are spending all of your time on the Florida Gulf coast and the three or four million dollars mansion on the beach and making no bones about it, Ewing's taxpayer dollar and political contribution dollars to go back and forth, eat and drink down there. It's also a question of credibility and trust. Is that the kind of governor you want? Is that the kind of person that is going to look you in the eye and tell you the truth about your healthcare, tell you the truth about your education, where your taxpayers dollars are going? And significantly, going back to the issue of transparency, is that the kind of governor who is going to be transparent with you about state government and their own ethics? And that's, I think, a big question. So we want to change a lot of this stuff in Alabama to give more transparency, but that's a big issue. I think that's going to dog him.
- [22:25]
A
Well, and you know what? I didn't know very much about Mr. Tuberville prior to him becoming a senator. I knew he was a football coach. But what really got me was when he blocked hundreds of military promotions for months over something that was really important to women in the military. A lot of people want to say, well, it was a national political dispute. You know what it was? It was reproductive health care for women in the military. That's why he did not want women who are serving this country who are putting their lives on the line in places like Iran, in the Middle east, who are fighting for our country. He did not want them to have basic, I'm talking basic reproductive health care while they are on active duty. And so he held up hundreds of military promotions as a total slap in the face to women in the military. And I just. To me, that's completely unforgivable. But I have a personal thing with that. And what that episode taught you a little bit about how he deals with veterans and the military.
- [23:47]
B
It tells me everything about who he is as a person, and that is that he cares more about a political hot button issue than he does our national security or. Or individuals, women and families. This affected a lot of men who were married to women, service members or also their own wives. This was an issue. And it wasn't just the generals that he blocked. Remember, he was blocking flag officers because of this and the fact that so many of our military, they're sent, they're stationed, they don't really have a lot of say of where they go and where they're stationed. So you're going to come to a state like Alabama who has very restrictive women's reproductive health care in this state. They couldn't travel, they couldn't do anything. It affected all of those people below those promotions who were waiting to step up. It affected so much of the national security. It says everything you need to know about somebody. And I'm going to tell you, Amy, I never thought I would see this, but it was absolutely happened recently with all the controversy about his residency and other things. He did an op ed recently talking about hopefully that was going to be behind him, but he literally said that doing that was one of the proudest moments he's had in the United States Senate. He doesn't get it to this day and would much rather this is all about him and politics and not about people or even national security. And we've got hundreds of thousands of veterans who live in this state. We've got one of the largest veteran populations per capita of any state in the country, maybe the largest. And I think veterans are just appalled at what they saw in that, what they're still seeing. There are other veterans issues that he's talked about. So I think that is going to be a big issue. It has not been fronted for just yet, but it's going to be.
- [25:58]
A
Well, it should be. Because you know who is smiling? Who is smiling when he did that? Vladimir Putin. They were smiling. Our adversaries were laughing and smiling because he was doing their job for them. He was hurting our national security. And everybody I talked to in the military talked about it. We knew about it. Republicans in Congress were saying that it was bad. They didn't say so publicly, but it was. Everybody knew it was hurting our national security. And there he is walking around laughing about it. I mean, it was just unforgivable, unforgivable.
- [26:35]
B
And it finally did get to a point that you had four of his Republican colleagues, including some of the strongest military pro national security folks in the US Senate, and Joni Ernst and Dan Sullivan and Lindsey Graham, who took to the Senate floor and blasted him by name because he kept blocking what they were doing. And it was a show. We all know what kind of show it was. It was a show. And people don't forget those kind of things. They really don't. Military, especially the folks that are currently serving. And veterans just do not forget or forgive those kind of actions because they see right through it and they know it's just purely politics. And we're going to. Candidly, Amy, we're going to contrast that. I am very proud of the record that I had in the Senate. I'm not personally not a veteran. My dad was two stints in the Navy. But the record that we had for the veterans for the military, including eliminating the military widows task for the first time in 30 years, we're going to make that contrast for the veterans in the state of Alabama to say it's time, folks, you take a little bit different look at the candidates that you've got going and who you want to have someone run the Department of Veterans affairs in the state of Alabama.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, this is such an important race for Alabama, for our country. What gives you hope right now with everything that's going On Doug, you know,
- [28:11]
B
I got to tell you, what gives me hope is the numbers of people that we saw voting in our primaries on May 19. We saw an extraordinary number of folks that cast a Democratic ballot. Again, we're an open primary state, so when you go, you ask for a Republican or Democratic ballot. We didn't have an awful lot of contested races in the Democratic Party, but yet we saw double the number of Democratic ballots cast than we had just four years ago. And you move that with what the Republican primary saw. After spending millions and millions of dollars in very hotly contested races for the Senate, for lieutenant governor, for Attorney general. They were really racist to the bottom. It was awful what we saw. But you saw Republican ballots down 25%. And the other thing that really gives me hope is the engagement of young people that we're seeing now across the board in every part of the state, in every zip code. These young folks are concerned about their future. They don't see the same kind of future that their parents had. They are concerned about AI. They're concerned that they won't have the same opportunities for housing, which, by the way, Tuberville was one of five senators to vote against the housing bill this week. They don't see the same opportunities for job growth and to have the American dream the way their parents did, which is just the opposite of my parents and what I grew up with. So we're seeing that energy for change. This is why I think this election is so important in the South. It's not a blue wave, it's a change wave. People are seeing that we're ready to make some changes to make sure that we have a better future for all Alabamians, for all the folks in the South. And that gives me an awful lot of hope.
- [30:12]
A
If people who are listening to this or viewing this want to get involved, they want to support you and your campaign because it is so important, not just for Alabama, but for our country. How do they do that?
- [30:26]
B
Thanks so much for asking that. It's a real simple website. It's dougjones.com you can go. We've got links to contribute, which, as you can imagine, and given the hotly contested House and Senate races and some other governors races, the competition for dollars is always really difficult. But it's especially difficult when people look at Alabama so they can contribute. They can sign up to volunteer because we've got volunteers set out across the country that make phone calls and do the things for us. It is one of those things. Amy and I really appreciate your Making a comment that how important it could be for the country. Because I think that right now we are in such a state of chaos, whether it is Republicans or Democrats. If folks can see Alabama making a change for sanity, making a change to make sure people on both sides of the political aisle are taken care of and are acknowledged and under understood and listened to, I think that we have the opportunity for that to ripple across America. I really do. So much of our divisions in this country started in Alabama. I acknowledge that. But so much of what can be positive can also start here. And it starts with my race, and it starts with all those running with me. So thank you for saying something about it, everyone.
- [31:50]
A
We have such a tremendous candidate here for governor in the state of Alabama. We need to get behind Doug Jones. We do not get this opportunity all the time. We need to support him. Whatever you can do, whether it's $5, 100 bucks, whatever, that. That is really important to these races. And I'm just so thankful you could come on. Talk about the Voting Rights act and everything that you're doing down in Alabama, Doug.
- [32:16]
B
Well, thank you, Amy, for having me. It's been a my pleasure and my honor to be with you. And I thank you for all that you've done in service to this country and for democracy.
- [32:27]
A
All right. You bet. It's wonderful to have you on. This has been Truth in the Barrel, Devil's Cut. We always end with a little bit of a whiskey theme because, you know, it's bourbon and I like bourbon and whiskey. Do you have a favorite whiskey or bourbon, Doug?
- [32:45]
B
You know, I've got a tremendous bourbon collection in my. My liquor cabinet over here. I've got a bunch of different ones. My favorite bourbon is just any bourbon that comes from Kentucky. What can I say?
- [33:00]
A
Well, that's. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good answer right there. That's a great answer. Well, awesome to have you on. Thank you so much for giving us a little bit of time. I know you're busy on the campaign trail, but as just a fellow American, I'm so grateful to you and we're going to continue to support you, Doug.
- [33:16]
B
Thanks, Amy. Really appreciate it. Enjoy this very much.