Congressman Bradley Byrne announces 2020 run for U.S. Senate

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Congressman Bradley Byrne announced last week in Mobile that he will challenge Democratic Senator Doug Jones for his seat in the 2020 election.

“In just a little over a year, we’ll have the Republican primary where we will select our nominee for president - Donald Trump again - but we’ll also select our Republican nominee for the Senate seat presently held by Doug Jones,” Byrne said. “I am a candidate for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate.”

Byrne had been considering a run for the seat for over a year, and said it was not a decision he made lightly.

Byrne, the three-term Congressman and Montrose resident, said he believed Alabama’s senator needed to represent the values of Alabama’s residents.

“”Look in Washington and tell me you don’t see a disconnect between your values and the values you see up there,” Byrne said. “Look in Washington and tell me you don’t see people that have a vision that’s fundamentally at odds with what America is.”

Byrne said he is a sixth-generation Alabamian and that he learned from his parents the values that he feels the Senate needs.

“We need someone to fight for Alabama values and someone who will go up to Washington and say ‘We do not do that in America’ and that we will not be a socialist country, we will not kill babies as they are being delivered, we won’t take away your guns from you and we won’t take health care away from you,” Byrne said. “I think I have a history and tradition of fighting for those values and I will continue to do that.”

Byrne’s potential opponent, Sen. Jones, released a statement shortly after Byrne’s announcement that referenced Byrne’s run for governor in 2010, a race Byrne lost in a runoff to former Governor Robert Bentley.

“Given the results of his losing bid for Governor in 2010, in which he did not even win the Republican nomination, it’s hard to see why they would nominate a career politician like Bradley Byrne now. He has been a part of the problem in Washington for years,” the statement said.