When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020, Tommy Tuberville made a promise that sounded too good to be true. He told Alabama he would donate "every dime" of his Senate salary to the state's veterans — and even hand them a check on TV every few months.

Six years later, the bill for that promise would top $1 million. But a new investigation by Lagniappe — using Tuberville's own tax records and his own charity's filings — found no evidence the money ever reached veterans. Now he's asking Alabama to make him governor. So let's look at what he promised, what he actually did, and who got left holding an empty hand.

The promise he made, over and over

This wasn't an offhand remark. Tuberville built it into his campaign.

Talking to a Birmingham radio show in February 2020, he said:

"My salary — you know what I'm doing? I'm going to come on your show once every few months, and I'm going to give my salary, a check, to a veteran or a wife that has lost her husband, or their kids to go to school. I'm not taking one dime, and I'm giving it to the veterans. I stand and put up when I talk."

He said it again in a campaign video before the March 2020 primary, where he was running against Jeff Sessions and Bradley Byrne:

"I stand with our veterans and I'm going to donate every dime I make when I'm in Washington, D.C., to the veterans of the state of Alabama. Folks, they deserve it. They deserve it a lot more than most of us."

A senator's salary is about $174,000 a year. Over six years in office, "every dime" would add up to well over a million dollars going to Alabama veterans. That was the deal Tuberville offered voters.

What the records actually show

Here's where the story falls apart.

Tuberville's campaign released his Alabama tax records earlier this month — not out of generosity, but because someone challenged whether he even lives in Alabama. The records were heavily blacked out, but a barcode on them left all the numbers exposed.

Those numbers tell the story:

• He reported wages of $135,266 in 2021, $136,588 in 2022, $129,898 in 2023, and $127,667 in 2024 — confirming he kept drawing his Senate pay.
• Over those same four years, the most his returns show going to charity or veterans is just $38,172 total — and that's being generous, since some of that figure may just be interest he paid.
• Meanwhile, once you count his real estate and investments, Tuberville reported income of more than $2.9 million over that span.

So a man who pulled in nearly $3 million, and who promised to give away "every dime" of his salary, shows about $38,000 in giving. That's not "every dime." That's barely any of them.

His own treasurer won't cover for him

The most damning part doesn't come from a critic. It comes from the man Tuberville put in charge of his own charity.

Chester McKinney is the treasurer of the Tommy Tuberville Foundation. He says Tuberville personally promised him, while campaigning, that he'd donate his salary. When a reporter asked McKinney whether that ever happened, he didn't make excuses:

"Coach has to live with that himself, I know what he said and I know what he promised — me and the people heard that. I'm not trying to cover for him."

McKinney said he runs the foundation's money himself and can account for every dollar in it — and that Tuberville's salary was never routed through the foundation. He also said he hadn't even spoken to Tuberville about the foundation in two or three years, and that the charity has gone quiet, skipping its annual golf tournament because the senator was too busy in Washington.

In other words: the salary didn't go through the charity, and the man who keeps the books has no idea where it went.

We've heard the excuse before

This isn't the first time Tuberville got caught short on this promise. Back in 2023, The Washington Post fact-checked the same pledge and found the foundation had spent very little, and that none of Alabama's major veterans charities would confirm getting money from him since he took office. One columnist called it bad enough to make him "the worst person in the Senate" that week.

Back then, Tuberville's office had an answer. His communications director said the foundation was under an IRS audit, that Tuberville was "in the process of reforming the Foundation," and that "he will keep his promise to the veterans of Alabama."

That was three years ago. The audit is now over — McKinney says it ended with no problems. And the promise still hasn't been kept. McKinney even said he never heard of any plan to route the Senate salary to the foundation in the first place. The excuse changed; the missing money didn't.

What the foundation did — and didn't — do

To be fair, the foundation isn't a complete ghost. Its IRS filings show it gave out some grants. In 2024 it listed $80,000 in grants, including money to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Association of the United States Army, and Alabama groups like Three Hots and a Cot and Still Serving Veterans.

That's real, and it's good. But look at the scale. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars a year from a foundation funded mostly by a golf tournament and speaking fees — not the million-plus dollars of personal Senate salary Tuberville stood in front of cameras and swore he would give away. The foundation's modest giving doesn't fill that gap. It just makes the gap easier to see.

A pattern, not a one-off

This is the same Tommy Tuberville who ran as a plain-talking outsider and then kept getting caught telling Alabama one thing while doing another:

• He spent 10 months blocking more than 450 military promotions — hurting the very service members and veterans he claims to champion — and got nothing for it.
• He failed to disclose about 132 stock trades in his first year, breaking a federal transparency law.
• He registered and voted in Florida while claiming Alabama as home — even as he championed strict voter-fraud laws for everyone else.

The salary promise fits right in. Say the thing voters want to hear. Bank the paycheck. Hope nobody checks.

Who actually loses

Veterans did. Tuberville used Alabama's veterans — and his own late father, a decorated WWII Purple Heart recipient — as the emotional centerpiece of his campaign. He told widows and kids that his salary would help them. Then he kept the money and the seat, and the people he made that promise to never got the checks he held up as proof he was different.

When Lagniappe emailed his campaign questions about the donations, his staff didn't answer.

You can't run for governor on your word to Alabama while your own treasurer says you have to "live with" a broken promise to veterans. Alabama deserves better.

Source

This post is based on reporting from Lagniappe: "No record Tuberville donated Senate salary to veterans" by Scott Johnson, June 23, 2026, with additional reporting from The Washington Post and the Alabama Political Reporter.