To be Governor of Alabama, the state Constitution says you have to actually live in Alabama. Not for a year. Not for five years. For at least seven years before the election. That rule has been on the books for a long time, and it is not complicated.

So it is a real question worth asking: has Tommy Tuberville lived in Alabama long enough to run?

On June 24, news broke that Tuberville is asking a Montgomery County court to throw out a lawsuit that says the answer is no. Two Alabama men, Brook Dorgan and Justin LeBlanc, filed the suit last week, arguing that Tuberville has not met the seven-year residency requirement set by the Alabama Constitution. Rather than answer the question, Tuberville filed a motion to dismiss and asked the court to make the whole thing go away.

The Florida Beach House

The lawsuit's argument is simple: Tuberville lived in Florida during years he has claimed he lived in Auburn, Alabama.

The evidence is hard to wave off. Tuberville and his wife bought a roughly 5,000-square-foot beachfront home in a gated community in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, back in 2012 for about $750,000. That was his home for years.

The Auburn property he now points to as his Alabama home — known locally as the "Game Day House" — was bought in 2018 by his wife and son. Tuberville himself wasn't even added to a homestead exemption on that house until mid-2024. When the house was first bought, he didn't claim it as his primary residence — which is exactly what you'd expect if it wasn't.

This isn't a new question for Tuberville, either. He registered to vote in Walton County, Florida in 2017, and he and his wife voted in Florida in November 2018 — after the period he now says he was already an Alabama resident. He stayed on Florida's voter rolls until March 2020, when he finally asked to be taken off.

He Submitted Tax Returns. An Expert Said It Wasn't Enough.

Earlier this month, Tuberville tried to settle the residency question by handing over income tax returns. It didn't close the case. An expert reviewing them said the documents were not enough to prove Alabama residency for the full seven years the Constitution requires.

That's the heart of the problem. The more documents that come out, the more they point at Florida.

Instead of Answering, He's Trying to Shut It Down

Here's the part that should bother every Alabama voter. Tuberville's response to all of this is not "here's the proof I lived here." It's "the court isn't allowed to ask."

His motion to dismiss argues that the court has no jurisdiction to take the case at all. His attorneys say the law doesn't let a court "second-guess" the Republican primary or question the party's own decision that he qualifies. The motion claims that ruling him ineligible would undermine voters' ability to decide for themselves.

In other words: don't look at the facts, look away.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen filed his own motion to dismiss, prepared by Attorney General Steve Marshall, making many of the same arguments. A hearing on both motions is set for June 29.

Tuberville also has the state GOP in his corner. The Alabama Republican Party rejected an earlier residency challenge from one of his former primary opponents and confirmed him as its nominee. A separate eligibility lawsuit was dismissed by a judge in May. So far, the strategy of running out the clock has worked.

The Hypocrisy Is the Point

Remember who we're talking about. Tommy Tuberville has spent years as a loud champion of strict voter-fraud laws — the kind that make it harder for regular people to cast a ballot, all in the name of "election integrity." He has demanded that everyone follow the rules to the letter.

Now he's the one with a years-long Florida voting history, a Florida beach house, and a homestead exemption he didn't claim in Alabama until 2024 — fighting in court to keep anyone from checking whether he followed the most basic rule of all: actually living in the state he wants to run.

This fits a pattern we've already seen from Tuberville. He's the senator who broke the STOCK Act by failing to disclose around 132 stock trades in his first year. He's the one who held up more than 450 military promotions for 10 months and got nothing for it. The thread running through all of it is the same: rules are for other people.

If you can't prove you've lived in Alabama long enough to legally run for Governor, the answer isn't to hire lawyers to block the question. The answer is to prove it. Tuberville hasn't — he's trying to get the case thrown out instead.

Alabama voters deserve a Governor who lives in Alabama. And they deserve an honest answer to a fair question.

We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on WHNT's reporting, "Tuberville, AL Secretary of State move to dismiss residency lawsuit."