Alabama US Senate Race Ends in Runoff Between Katie Brit and Mo Brooks

Alabama US Senate Race Ends in Runoff Between Katie Brit and Mo Brooks
Rep. Mo Brooks (R) celebrates with his family after entering a runoff election against candidate Katie Britt in Huntsville, Alabama on May 24, 2022 (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—A three-way race for the U.S. Senate on May 25 between Katie Britt, Rep. Mo Brooks (R), and Mike Durant ended with no candidate holding the 50 percent of the vote required to avoid a runoff.

Britt and Brooks, the two frontrunners, will now have four weeks to campaign before a runoff election decides who will head to the general election.

With 66 of Alabama’s 67 counties reporting, Britt had 45.3 percent of the vote to Brooks’s 28.6 percent.

Brooks gave a speech that celebrated his continued campaign and urged his supporters to continue their efforts.

“Two months ago, the experts declared our campaign was dead in the water,” he said to a crowd of supporters in Huntsville. “Today, just call me Lazarus, resurrected by Alabama citizens who figured out who the real MAGA conservative is.”

In the speech, he thanked his family and the other candidates that ran in the election and praised Durant, while heaping blame on Britt for attack ads.

“In particular, I applaud Mike Durant, who honorably served in America’s military, helped build Pinnacle Solutions, creating hundreds of jobs for Alabama citizens, and who was dishonestly and unfairly hammered by countless negative attack ads crafted by the Mitch McConnell-Katie Britt team,” he said.

Britt, the CEO of Alabama’s business council, ran on a traditional conservative platform that supported fighting big tech companies. Although Britt’s campaign site doesn’t mention former President Donald Trump, she has agreed with his claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election. Britt is a first-time candidate.

“It is clear tonight that Alabamians want new blood. They want someone to go to Washington, D.C., and shake it up. It is clear that they want a true Christian conservative Republican who will lead on the America first agenda and doesn’t just talk about it but knows how to actually get something done,” Britt told supporters gathered in Montgomery.

After the Republican primary, Trump’s endorsement might be more formality than force-multiplier. Alabama is an extremely conservative state, and the winning GOP primary candidate will likely go on to win the general election.

In his speech, Brooks said he wasn’t concerned about the impact of an endorsement from former president Donald Trump on Britt’s campaign. Earlier in the race, Brooks had a Trump endorsement, but Trump rescinded it.

According to several people who worked on Brooks’s campaign, losing the endorsement caused a strategic shift.

“That’s the classic Mo Brooks race,” said Stan McDonald, Brook’s campaign co-chairman. “The professional donor base versus the volunteer voter base. And Moe really knows how to appeal to that volunteer voter base.”

NTD Photo
Stan McDonald, the campaign co-chairman for Rep. Mo Brooks (R) waits for election results in Huntsville, Alabama on May 24, 2022 (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

Britt and Brooks will face each other in the runoff election on June 21

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From The Epoch Times

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