Alabama voters will hear President Trump’s name early and often from Attorney General Steve Marshall and Congressman Barry Moore as they campaign for the U.S. Senate.
That is expected in Alabama, where Republican support for Trump has never wavered since a rousing rally in Mobile helped launch his presidential aspirations back in 2015.
Moore has said it was just before that rally that he agreed to become the first elected official in the nation to endorse Trump for president.
Since that time, Marshall has joined in many legal fights on behalf of Trump policies and fought initiatives from Joe Biden’s time as president.
How likely is the president to choose sides in the race to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a loyal ally in Washington?
That is unclear. But it is a factor to watch as Alabama’s high-stakes election next year draws closer.
“No doubt that both candidates will be putting their conservative bona fides on full display,” Joseph Aistrup, political science professor at Auburn University, said in an email.
“Congressman Moore has been a loyal Trump supporter in Congress and a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
“AG Marshall has filed lawsuits with other GOP AGs fighting various Biden policies and fought unsuccessfully in federal court to keep Alabama’s 2022 U.S. Congressional map in place.”
Aistrup said he expects the candidates to challenge each other’s records and MAGA credentials.
“None of that will matter if Trump decides to endorse one of these candidates,” Aistrup said.
“His endorsement in Alabama would be decisive for the endorsed candidate.”
Who is in the lead?
Marshall won statewide elections for attorney general in 2018 and again in 2022 after Gov. Robert Bentley appointed him to the position in 2017. He is a former district attorney in Marshall County.
Moore was twice elected to Congress in Alabama’s 2nd District, then switched to the 1st District last year after a federal court redrew the district map. Moore beat the incumbent, Jerry Carl.
Moore, who is from Enterprise, the same hometown as Sen. Katie Britt, served in the Alabama House of Representatives before his election to Congress. He started and ran an excavation, demolition, and waste disposal business.
Marshall and Moore are likely the frontrunners but they have competition.
Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL who ran for Jefferson County sheriff in 2022, is also running for the Republican nomination.
Mo Brooks, who served six terms in Congress before losing to Katie Britt in the 2022 Senate race, has not ruled out a run but says it is “improbable.”
A win by a Democrat would be a longshot.
But several are in the race, including Kyle Sweetser, a business owner and lifelong Alabama Republican who spoke at last summer’s Democratic National Convention, Dakarai Larriett, a business owner, Birmingham native, and University of Alabama graduate, and Mark Wheeler of Heflin, a Jacksonville State University graduate and chemist who works for a wire manufacturing company.
Marissa Grayson, assistant professor of public policy studies at the University of Alabama, said Marshall has an edge over Moore in name recognition because of his two statewide wins.
“I do believe Moore can overcome this disadvantage but he will need to dedicate more resources to introducing himself to the state than perhaps Marshall will,” Grayson said in an email.
“Both candidates are likely to focus much of their energy on convincing Alabama voters that they are most loyal to President Trump,” Grayson said.
Grayson said Moore’s membership in the House Freedom Caucus, a group that sometimes opposes other Republicans over issues like the rising federal debt, could be an issue.
“While the Caucus has typically been viewed positively by Alabama Republicans, the Caucus has been seen as a nuisance to the Trump agenda, and had a lot less influence on the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ than past spending bills,” Grayson said.
What will Trump do?
Grayson thinks a Trump endorsement is unlikely unless polls show one of the candidates is far ahead.
She believes Marshall is more likely to get a Trump endorsement than Moore.
“But President Trump doesn’t like to lose, and so an endorsement most likely won’t happen unless polls show Marshall leading by a significant amount,” Grayson said.
A strong example of that came in the 2022 Senate race. Trump withdrew his endorsement for Mo Brooks and later endorsed Katie Britt after it was clear Britt had a commanding lead.
Zoe Nemerever, assistant professor of political science at Auburn University, said Trump’s track record shows the futility of trying to predict whether he will make an endorsement.
“I think it’s impossible to know what Trump’s going to do,” Nemerever said.
Nemererver said Moore should benefit from having won elections in two different congressional districts and representing voters from two of the state’s four largest metro areas – Mobile and Montgomery.
She expects Moore to win, partly because of an image she described as “MAGA to the core.”
“Moore has a very strong Republican brand,” Nemerever said.
“He’s a member of the House Freedom Caucus. He says he is the first person to have ever endorsed Donald Trump for president way back in 2015.”
‘“He is the opposite of RINO (Republican in name only),” Nemever said. “He is like Republican in everything. And I think that will go over well with Alabama voters.”
Marshall, on the other hand, has boosted his own MAGA credentials as attorney general, opposing President Biden’s initiatives and supporting President Trump’s by working in conjunction with other Republican AGs on federal court cases.
Marshall testified against Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I think he’s gone beyond the institutional functions of the job and really used it to shape politics in Alabama to the best extent an attorney general could,” Nemerever said.
That can help Marshall in the election if his campaign can effectively tell voters about those efforts, Nemerever said, because many don’t know what the state attorney general does, or any state office-holder besides the governor.
“If you went up to them in Kroger and asked them who’s the attorney general of the state right now. I would be very surprised if half the people could name him,” Nemerever said.
In a video to launch his campaign, Marshall made it clear that Trump knows who he is. It features three clips of Trump calling him by name.
“Thank you, Steve,” Trump says. “You’re doing a great job.”
“We have fought the fights that had to be fought for the people of Alabama,” Marshall says on the ad.
“Steve stands shoulder to shoulder with President Trump ready to fight to take our country back,” the narrator says.
Moore’s campaign launch video includes a clip of Moore speaking at Trump’s stadium rally in Mobile back in August 2015, when Trump was just one of more than a dozen Republican candidates and still considered a longshot.
“I didn’t wait to see which way the wind was blowing,” Moore says on the ad, taped with his wife Heather on the porch of their home in Enterprise.
“I stood with him from the very beginning, and I’ve stood with him every step of the way in Congress, fighting for the America first agenda,” Moore says.
“I’m not a RINO, and I’m sure not one of those MAGA pretenders suddenly coming to be conservative. I ain’t never been nothing but a Republican, and I stand up for our values in Congress every day.”
Aistrup, the Auburn political science professor, said he expects to see ads in the early stages of the campaign that focus on introducing the candidates to the voters, especially for Moore, since he has not run statewide before.
As the primary draws closer, he expects them to go on the attack.
“From a conservative Republican’s perspective, neither of these candidates has any major blemishes, but that won’t prevent them from trying to scar one another in an attempt score political points,” Aistrup wrote.
The primary is May 19, 2026.
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