A year after he tendered his resignation as U.S. Attorney General and retreated from the spotlight, Jeff Sessions is preparing to enter the political circus once again. Multiple outlets are reporting that Sessions intends to announce his 2020 candidacy for the U.S. Senate, vying for the Alabama seat he previously held for four terms and that Sen. Doug Jones currently holds. The news of Sessions’s likely run, which he’s expected to formally announce Thursday, comes after months of speculation about the former A.G.’s political future, as Sessions was rumored to be “seriously considering” a Senate run. “He wants to return to the Senate,” one Republican official familiar with Sessions’s plan told CNN.
Sessions reportedly reached his decision in the past several days, CNN reports, just barely ahead of a Friday filing deadline in Alabama. The soon-to-be candidate is now working on building a campaign staff and garnering support among Alabama’s members of Congress, with CNN reporting that current Sen. Richard Shelby intends to endorse him. “If he runs, I think he would be a formidable candidate,” Shelby told reporters earlier this week, prior to Sessions’s decision becoming public. The former senator will also be launching his campaign with a head-start in fundraising, as Sessions has $2.5 million still left over in his campaign account.
Despite his Senate experience and fundraising boost, however, Sessions will have to contend with a crowded primary battle, as Republicans duke it out to determine who will challenge Jones in one of 2020’s most closely-watched Senate races. Sessions’s primary opponents currently include Rep. Bradley Byrne, Secretary of State John Merrill, state Rep. Arnold Mooney, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville—and, most contentiously, former judge Roy Moore, whose 2017 Senate bid against Jones was brought down by sexual misconduct allegations involving underage girls. “He’s been out of the swamp for less than two years, and now he’s itching to go back,” Tuberville said in a statement responding to Sessions’s candidacy, which he said was “not a surprise.” “He’s another career politician that the voters of Alabama will reject. As attorney general, he failed the president at his point of greatest need.”
But Sessions’s greatest rival in the election may not be one of his opponents, but rather President Donald Trump, who quickly soured on Sessions after the then-attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation. Trump has made no secret of his dislike for Sessions—or, as Trump reportedly nicknamed him, Mr. Magoo—dogging him with enough insults and criticism to ultimately inspire Sessions’s resignation. “I would say if I had one do-over, it would be, I would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general,” Trump said in June on Meet the Press, describing hiring Sessions as his “biggest mistake.” And the president doesn’t seem to be coming around on Sessions as the politician prepares his possible return to Washington. NBC News reports that Sessions has reportedly been expressly told that Trump intends to campaign against him, and the Washington Post notes that Trump has even joked he should go one step further, reportedly telling White House aides and senators that if Sessions runs, Trump wants to go down to Alabama and challenge Sessions in the primary himself. “I think it would be very damaging for Mr. Sessions to get in the race because the President is going to come out against him so hard,” primary rival Byrne predicted to CNN.