Alabama coach Nick Saban has jumped into the U.S. Senate race in his native West Virginia by endorsing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a longtime friend.

He appeared in an ad for Manchin that came out Wednesday, alongside WVU basketball coach Bob Huggins and West Virginia basketball legend Jerry West:

“Joe and I grew up together in West Virginia, and he never forgets where he came from,” Saban says to open the ad. The coach comes back on a few seconds later and says:

“I don’t have a better friend or know a better person than Joe Manchin.”

Saban’s donated to Manchin in the past, at least once. He’s also donated to at least one Republican who lost in a 1994 primary.

In 2010, he donated $2,400 to Manchin’s campaign. That year, Manchin was running in (and would win) the special election to replace longtime Sen. Robert Byrd.

In 1994, he donated $250 to Ohio Republican primary Senate candidate Bernadine Healy. Saban worked for the Browns at this point, which might explain him backing a loser.

Those donations are public via the campaign finance database at Open Secrets. They aren’t necessarily Saban’s only political donations.

Usually, Saban tries to avoid politics like the plague.

The day after the 2016 presidential election, an event that Saban would have had to literally be living under a rock not to have noticed, he claimed he didn’t know that Tuesday had even been Election Day. He later gave this explanation:

“I never said I didn’t vote,” Saban said. “Now, that’s like the big news story all over the country. I got an absentee ballot. Tuesday’s our biggest workday and game plan day, and I forgot it was Election Day until I got home at 11 o’clock at night. So, I don’t know how all of these things sort of get twisted around. I guess it makes a better story.”

Saban’s political history is cloudy, but he’s said a few things in the past that have made it seem like he might like Democrats.

We can all make of this one what we will:

Lots of life lessons in the new Nick Saban biography. pic.twitter.com/l2MFUy07vm — Ben Cohen (@bzcohen) July 27, 2015

“Ultimately, you never want to sleep with anybody who has less to lose than you do. So, ultimately, if I’m ever going to sleep around on Miss Terry,” Saban said of his wife, “it’s going to be with Hillary Fucking Rodham Clinton.”

In 2017, after Donald Trump called black, protesting NFL players “sons of bitches,” someone asked Saban about players who kneeled during the national anthem. Saban didn’t endorse the protests, but did say they weren’t “meant to disrespect a veteran:”

“I don’t think that what these people are doing is in any way, shape or form meant to disrespect a veteran or somebody like yourself who has worked so hard, fought so hard and sacrificed so much for all of us to have the quality of life that we want to have. But one of the things that you also fought for and made sacrifice for was that we could all have the freedom to have a choice in terms of what we believe, what we do and what we said.

The comment aligned more closely with mainstream Democratic than Republican opinion.

And there’s this note, from a New York Times political reporter:

It will surprise nobody to hear that I have talked to Manchin a few times about Saban...

Pulled tape from January. He said Saban basically a mod Dem, but “he won’t get involved in politics” (we were talking Doug Jones race)



pauses



“He’ll get in my race”https://t.co/nb4stxR7ga — Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) October 18, 2018

Saban didn’t intervene in Alabama’s special Senate race in late 2017, when Democrat Doug Jones narrowly beat a Republican who’d been repeatedly accused of child sex abuse.

Saban’s support of Manchin doesn’t mean he’s some big liberal.

Manchin is a Democrat, but he’s the closest thing the Senate Democrats have to a Republican. He’s voted to confirm both of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and is, on almost any difficult issue, the Democrat most likely to vote with his Republican colleagues. And Saban’s public support of Manchin centers on friendship, not his voting record.

Saban’s visited the White House repeatedly with Alabama national championship teams. That’s included trips to see both Barack Obama and Trump. He calls recruits from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when he goes.

Manchin is on the ballot in November against Republican Patrick Morrisey. Manchin has an 89 percent chance to win, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast.