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Folks,
Once again, Tommy Tuberville’s campaign is scrambling to cover up and walk back something he said. This time it’s his position on data centers. Alabamians are rightfully angry that he dismissed their legitimate concerns as “bull crap” and blamed opposition to data centers on Chinese propaganda. Now, I guess we are supposed to believe that he suddenly wants to listen.
If Tuberville legitimately wanted to hear Alabamians’ concerns on this issue, that would be good. But given that he just accepted yet another $25,000 check from a data center company, I don’t believe him here for a second.
I believe this walk-back about as much as Alabama veterans should have believed Tuberville when he said he was going to donate 100% of his Senate salary to them. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. Time and time again, Tuberville has lied to the people of Alabama whenever it is politically expedient, and especially when there is money to gain from it.
You don’t need to do any kind of fancy opposition research to understand Tuberville’s connections to the companies that stand to benefit from the data-center boom. You just have to review the financial disclosures he filed himself.
Stocks tied to AI and data centers make up the single largest portion of Tuberville’s disclosed individual-stock holdings. His latest annual disclosure lists investments in Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, and many more. Even a company that supplies the water to these monstrosities. Those investments make Tuberville’s recent accusations particularly rich. While dismissing Alabamians’ concerns about their water, power bills, tax bills, and quality of life as “bullcrap,” he stands to enrich himself when they are built. Even as he insults Alabamian’s concerns as “Chinese propaganda,” he discloses that he made 14 stock trades involving Chinese AI data center developer Alibaba.
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Can this guy get more hypocritical?
Now, to be clear, it is completely fine to own stocks in those companies. What is not fine is to run for governor while asking Alabama to gamble the future of our state on an industry in which you have a financial stake. These decisions should be made based on what is best for Alabama communities, not by people who could profit from the outcome.
Alabama can build data centers. That’s fine with me. But we have got to do it right, with the appropriate guardrails. And that includes making sure the people making these decisions, including and especially our governor, have absolutely no financial stake in them.
Our state has been ruled by special interests and corporations for far too long. That’s why I’m calling for Alabama to ban statewide elected officials from trading individual stocks, strengthen financial reporting requirements for legislators, and require every official voting on a data-center project to put their financial interests on the record before the vote.
No matter what party you belong to, we can all get behind one simple principle: our public officials should work for the people of Alabama. If you believe that decisions about what gets built in our communities should be made by the people of Alabama, please make a contribution to my campaign today.
Thank you,
Doug Jones
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