Jeff Sessions May Run For His Old Senate Seat, Now That He Is Out As Attorney General
Now that he has been pushed out of the White House, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be considering a run at his old Alabama Senate seat in 2020.
According to Politico, Sessions isn’t done with public service. Just a day after being forced to resign by President Donald Trump, Sessions has apparently expressed a desire to take back his former position as a representative of his home state.
Jeff Sessions was asked to resign by the President on Wednesday, just a day after the midterm elections took place. Trump has long hinted that he planned to sack the former Alabama Senator, largely due to frustrations that he has with Sessions’ choice to recuse himself from Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president,” said Trump of Sessions’ recusal.
Sessions had considered resigning several times over the past year, only to have colleagues like Reince Priebus convince him to stay on.
“I knocked on the door of the car, and Jeff was sitting there and I just jumped in and shut the door,” Priebus said. “And I said, ‘Jeff, what’s going on?’ And then he told me that he was going to resign. I said, ‘You cannot resign. It’s not possible. We are going to talk about this right now.’ So I dragged him back up to my office from the car.”
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly contemplating a return to the Senate after President Trump fired him.
https://t.co/mzXtNkgAgn— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 8, 2018
Still, Sessions was prepared to resign after the midterms, and when Trump asked for his resignation on November 7, he submitted it. The former Attorney General asked to finish out the week, but was told that Wednesday would be his last day.
The former Alabama Senator left the Senate in 2017 to take on the role of Attorney General — at Trump’s request. In a surprise upset, Democrat Doug Jones won Sessions’ vacated seat. Many expect Jones’ seat to be a vulnerable one in the 2020 election, given the state’s conservative leanings.
Former Republican Senator Luther Strange, who filled Sessions’ seat in the gap between Sessions’ appointment and Jones’ election, urged Sessions to run in a tweet on Wednesday.
Jeff Sessions for Senate in 2020! #alpolitics
— Luther Strange (@lutherstrange) November 7, 2018
It isn’t certain, however, that Sessions would easily win back his seat. The president’s attacks on the former Attorney General have taken a toll on his popularity with the Trump base.
