Donald Trump endorsed the surging Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday, putting his stamp on a Senate primary campaign that will be remembered for which Republican could pledge allegiance to the president the loudest.

And the endless expressions of Trump reverence have sparked much curiosity among scholars and scribes who follow Alabama politics.

“We are deciding to let the president, in effect, pick our senator,” said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University and a longtime follower of Alabama campaigns and elections.

Said Wayne Flynt, a political historian and professor emeritus at Auburn University: “At present, states such as Alabama are so smitten with Trump that they are prepared to let him do the thinking for them.”

‘Penalized’ or ‘right thing’

Indeed, Trump enjoys special popularity in Alabama that he doesn’t have anywhere else. According to the latest Morning Consult survey, the president’s popularity is higher in Alabama than in any other state.

That popularity was on full display during November’s Alabama-LSU football game at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, where fans roared at the president’s arrival.

President Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania, wave to the crowd at the LSU-Alabama football game Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019, at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (Photo by Laura Chramer)Laura Chramer

And it was at that game that Trump openly made clear his feelings about his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who had just entered the Senate race.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, another of the Senate candidates, was in the seating box with Trump that day. He said Trump “expressed his disappointment” about Sessions to him while the two visited.

And Trump’s dismay and disdain would appear to have trickled down to Alabama voters. Sessions, who was viewed as Alabama’s most popular politician not long ago, and served the state in the Senate for 20 years, won 31.6% of the vote in the March 3 GOP primary, trailing Tuberville’s 33.4%.

And now, Sessions trails the former Auburn football coach by double digits, according to the latest polling, as the two head to a March 31 runoff.

Trump’s anger at Sessions focuses on the latter’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian election meddling.

“I did the right thing,” Sessions has repeatedly said, to the agreement of ethics officials, fellow senators, and even current U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

Trump has repeatedly disagreed, tweeting out last week, for example, that Sessions was “weak” for backing away from the Russia probe, opening the door to the prolonged investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller.

This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins! https://t.co/2jGnRgOS6h — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

Tuberville’s campaign is also piling on. In a statement Tuesday in which Tuberville seemingly declined to participate in any debates with Sessions, his campaign manager said, “Voters understand which candidate supports President Trump and which candidate cut and ran when Democrats launched the bogus Russia witch hunt.”

Sessions, as attorney general, cited what was viewed as a “pretty reasonable” Department of Justice regulation that prohibits agency officials from investigating campaigns of which they were a participant. Sessions, in February 2016, was the first sitting U.S. senator to endorse Trump’s presidential campaign that year.

At the time of the recusal, Sessions had come under scrutiny for failing to disclose meetings he had with Sergei Kislyak, a former Russian ambassador to the U.S., during the 2016 campaign.

“We’ve complained for a generation – whether it was over (Guy) Hunt, (Don) Siegelman, (Mike) Hubbard, (Roy) Moore – that our state has a thorough history of the last generation that ... it is sensitive toward ethics,” said Brown. “But the truth is, Jeff Sessions honored the ethics of his office, and the very voters who say they want strict adherence to ethics now are OK with the idea of having a president pick the senator. And we’ll show deference – ‘Mr. President, you tell us who should be our representative and we’ll anoint them.’ That doesn’t represent an attitude of a free-thinking people.”

I'm one of the architects of the Trump agenda – I’ve always supported it and always will. Nothing the President can do will deter me from supporting this agenda, because my principles, just like my faith, are fundamental to who I am and immovable. — Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) March 11, 2020

Quin Hillyer, a Mobile-based senior commentary writer at The Washington Examiner, said that Sessions did the only ethical thing he possibly could do when he recused himself.

“He asked the Ethics Office what to do. They correctly told him he must recuse, and so that’s what he did. No matter what Trump says, it would have been dishonorable for Sessions to do anything else. Sessions should not be penalized for doing the right thing,” he said.

Influential ‘endorsement’

Polling released on Tuesday suggests that voters may be penalizing Sessions anyway.

According the poll of 645 voters released by Montgomery-based Cygnal, Tuberville leads Sessions by 51.5% to 39.5%, with 9% undecided. Of those polled, 45% said they agreed that Trump opposes Sessions in the Senate race; just 15.5% disagreed.

Moreover, Tuberville comfortably leads Sessions in the favorability rating, 62.6% to 55.7%. But the outcome flip-flops in the unfavorability rating: Sessions is at 38.3%, with Tuberville at 26.1%. (The Cygnal poll also assessed the ratings for Byrne, who ran a strong third place in the March 3 primary. His favorable rating is 44.8%; his unfavorable rating is 31.1%).

“Jeff Sessions hasn’t had a serious primary race in nearly 30 years,” said Brent Buchanan, CEO and founder of Cygnal and a Republican Party strategist, who was interviewed prior to Trump’s endorsement tweet. “Republican voters still mostly like him, but Tuberville has stronger favorability. That’s why Tuberville is leading the ballot. Think of it that Sessions is liked but not loved.”

At present, Trump is 0-2 with endorsements in Alabama Senate contests. He supported the losing Luther Strange during the 2017 GOP runoff against Roy Moore, then backed the losing Moore ahead of the special election won by Democrat Doug Jones.

Phillip Rawls, a journalism professor at Auburn University who spent years as a news reporter covering Alabama politics, said that it’s difficult to gauge how ardently that GOP voters follow the president’s advice.

In his opinion, voters in this state are inclined to “listen politely” to political higher-ups but “still make up their own minds.”

“Trump’s supporters have never complained about him overcommunicating and they won’t start now,” said Rawls. “Does that mean they will listen? No. We saw that in the Republican race for the U.S. Senate in 2017 when Trump used social media and a personal appearance (in Huntsville) to support incumbent Luther Strange. It didn’t work.”

Rawls said that Trump is hardly the first influential politician to seek to steer an election by pushing a preferred candidate. Gov. George Wallace, he noted, did it often, “sometimes with effectiveness and sometimes without.”

More recently, the state’s powerbrokers – including Gov. Kay Ivey, who enjoys strong approval ratings, according to Morning Consult – failed to make much of a dent in support of Amendment One, which would have made the state Board of Education members appointed instead of elected. The ballot measure overwhelmingly failed by around 75% of the vote.

‘Slavish’ loyalty

But Trump’s popularity in Alabama is nearly unrivaled. The president’s 28.3% margin of victory in Alabama over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the widest such margin in a presidential contest in the state since 1972.

And since then, Republican politicians have been praising the president at any chance they can get.

“Ultimately, the election is up to the people,” said David Lublin, professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C. “But what has become striking in today’s Republican Party – and nowhere more than in Alabama -- is where in the Republican Party the slavish loyalty to the president has become the No. 1 prized asset in a way we’ve never seen before.”

Dublin said he wonders if that loyalty crosses constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

“Institutions like the Senate and House and judiciary are to check the president’s powers in the executive branch,” said Lublin. “Many would argue that Congress intended to be the superior of these co-equal branches. But what is striking … is that the Republicans in Congress have become loathe to contradict the president on anything. They fear his wrath and that of his supporters that in a highly polarized environment, would be hazardous to a political career.”

Sessions, Lublin said, is caught in the middle of the political reality.

“Nowhere further shows this better than Alabama and Jeff Sessions if all that is prized is the loyalty of the moment,” Lublin said. “Sessions supported (Trump’s) agenda very much as attorney general and it was never enough because he refused to throw himself inappropriately in front of the investigation.”

He added, “It’s very telling that the president just seethes at Jeff Sessions. One assumes that if the president was not seething, he would’ve (still) been attorney general or might’ve come in first place during the Alabama Senate primary.”