Doug Jones (politician)
Gordon Douglas Jones is an American politician and attorney who served as a United States senator from Alabama from 2018 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Jones was previously the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 1997 to 2001. As of 2026, he is the last Democrat to have won or held statewide office in Alabama.
Jones was born in Fairfield, Alabama, and is a graduate of the University of Alabama and Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. After law school, he worked as a congressional staffer and as a federal prosecutor before moving to private practice. In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Jones as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Jones's most prominent cases were the successful prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African-American girls and the indictment of domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph. He returned to private practice at the conclusion of Clinton's presidency in 2001.
Jones announced his candidacy for United States Senate in the 2017 special election following the resignation of Republican incumbent Jeff Sessions to become U.S. Attorney General. After winning the Democratic primary in August, he faced former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore in the general election. Jones was considered a long-shot candidate in a deeply Republican state. A month before the election, Moore was alleged to have sexually assaulted and otherwise acted inappropriately with several women, including some who were minors at the time. Jones won the special election by 22,000 votes, 50%–48%. Jones ran for a full term in 2020 and lost to Republican nominee Tommy Tuberville in a landslide. His margin of defeat was the largest of an incumbent senator since 2010.
In January 2021, he joined CNN as a political commentator. Jones was a fellow at the Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service during the spring 2021 academic semester, and was a distinguished Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics during the fall of 2022. In February 2022, the Biden administration named him as a nomination advisor for legislative affairs, advising the president on Supreme Court nominations. He is currently a Democratic candidate in the 2026 Alabama gubernatorial election.
Early life and education
Doug Jones was born in Fairfield, Alabama to Gordon and Gloria Jones. His father worked at U.S. Steel and his mother was a homemaker. He went to Fairfield High School. Jones graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Science in political science in 1976, and earned his Juris Doctor from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in 1979. He is a member of Beta Theta Pi.Jones's political career began as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Alabama Senator Howell Heflin. Jones then worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1980 to 1984 before resigning to work at a private law firm in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1984 to 1997. He ran in the Democratic primary for district 6 of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1994, but did not advance to the runoff.
Career
Defense of Tom Posey in Iran Contra affair
In 1988, Jones acted as defense counsel for Alabama man Tom Posey who allegedly supplied weapons to Contras in Nicaragua through his organization Civilian Military Assistance with weapons and was a well-known supporter of the KKK.During the 2017 Special Senate election, this history served as the basis for an opposition campaign, calling into question Jones's support for civil rights and the black community.
Joe Biden 1988 presidential campaign
In 1988, Jones served as co-chair for Joe Biden's 1988 presidential bid. Biden and Jones have remained friends since first meeting around 1976.U.S. Attorney appointment
President Bill Clinton announced on August 18, 1997, his intent to appoint Jones as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, and formally nominated Jones to the post on September 2, 1997. On September 8, 1997, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama appointed Jones as interim U.S. Attorney. The Senate confirmed Jones' nomination on November 8, 1997, by voice vote. Jones served until May 31, 2001.Eric Rudolph case
In January 1998, Eric Rudolph bombed the New Woman All Women Health Care Center in Birmingham. Jones was responsible for coordinating the state and federal task force in the aftermath, and advocated that Rudolph be tried first in Birmingham before being extradited and tried in Georgia for his crimes in that state, such as the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.16th Street Baptist Church bombing case
Jones prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, two members of the Ku Klux Klan, for their roles in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. The case was reopened the year before Jones was appointed, but did not gain traction until his appointment. A federal grand jury was called in 1998, which caught the attention of Cherry's ex-wife, Willadean Cherry, and led her to call the FBI to give her testimony. Willadean then introduced Jones to family and friends, who reported their own experiences from the time of the bombing. A key piece of evidence was a tape from the time of the bombing in which Blanton said he had plotted with others to make the bomb. Jones was deputized to argue in state court and indicted Blanton and Cherry in 2000. Blanton was found guilty in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. Both were sentenced to life in prison. Cherry died in prison in 2004. Blanton was up for parole in 2016; Jones spoke against his release, and parole was denied. Blanton died in prison in 2020.Jones recounts the history of the bombings and his subsequent involvement in Blanton and Cherry's prosecution in his 2019 book Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights.
Return to private practice
Jones left office in 2001 and returned to private practice, joining the law firm of Haskell Slaughter Young & Rediker. In 2004, he was court-appointed General Special Master in an environmental cleanup case involving Monsanto in Anniston, Alabama. In 2007, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute gave Jones its 15th Anniversary Civil Rights Distinguished Service Award. Also in 2007, Jones testified before the United States House Committee on the Judiciary about the importance of reexamining crimes of the Civil Rights Era. In 2013, he formed the Birmingham firm Jones & Hawley, PC with longtime friend Greg Hawley. Jones was named one of B-Metro Magazines Fusion Award winners in 2015. In 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alabama chapter of the Young Democrats of America.U.S. Senate
Elections
2002
On August 15, 2001, Jones announced an exploratory candidacy for U.S. Senate against incumbent Jeff Sessions in 2002. Jones said he was running because "We've hardly seen Jeff Sessions in the last four years...I'm going to be here to work for the people of Alabama." Despite his successful prosecution of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing case, Jones was not well-known statewide and had low name recognition. He ended his campaign prior to the Democratic Party primary on February 18, 2002, citing difficulties raising money.2017
On May 11, 2017, Jones announced his candidacy for that year's U.S. Senate special election, running for the seat left open when Sessions was appointed Attorney General. Sessions, a Republican, had held the seat since 1997, after Democrat Howell Heflin chose not to run for reelection. Jones won the Democratic nomination in August, and became the senator-elect for Alabama after defeating former Alabama Supreme Court judge Roy Moore in the general election on December 12, which was also Jones's 25th wedding anniversary.Jones received 673,896 votes to Moore's 651,972 votes with 22,852 write-in votes. After the election, Moore refused to concede. He filed a lawsuit attempting to block the state from certifying the election and called for an investigation into voter fraud, as well as a new election. On December 28, 2017, a judge dismissed his suit and state officials certified the election results, officially declaring Jones the winner.
2020
Jones ran for a full six-year term. He was seen as the most vulnerable senator from either party since Alabama is a deeply Republican state and the circumstances and controversy surrounding his Republican opponent in 2017 were no longer a factor.The Democratic Party nominated Jones for the seat unopposed. The two top contenders in the Republican primary were former football coach Tommy Tuberville and former United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had held Jones's seat before resigning to become attorney general in 2017. U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne was also a contender, sometimes even outpolling the other candidates, but in the first round of the primary, on March 3, Tuberville and Sessions finished second and first. Since neither had a majority of the vote, they advanced to a runoff, which Tuberville won.
Tuberville won the general election 60% to 40%. Jones was the only Democratic senator to lose re-election in 2020.
Tenure
Jones was sworn in on January 3, 2018, alongside fellow Democrat Tina Smith of Minnesota, and his term ran through January 3, 2021, the balance of Sessions's term. He was the first Democrat to represent the state in the U.S. Senate in 21 years, and the first elected in 25. Jones was one of five Democratic senators who voted for the continuing resolution that failed to pass and consequently led to the January 2018 United States federal government shutdown. According to Morning Consult, which polls approval ratings of senators, as of 2019, Jones had a 41% approval rating, with 36% disapproving. This trailed Jones's fellow Alabama senator, Republican Richard Shelby, who had a 45% approval rating, with 30% disapproving.On January 8, 2019, Jones was one of four Democrats to vote to advance a bill imposing sanctions against the Syrian government and furthering U.S. support for Israel and Jordan as Democratic members of the chamber employed tactics to end the United States federal government shutdown of 2018–2019.
In September 2019, after the House launched an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, Jones urged caution on the part of the media and his colleagues because his experience with law had led him to believe that it was "very unlikely there's going to be an absolute smoking gun on either side". He stated his support for "fact-finding" by the House, only after which he would make a decision about Trump's guilt. In February 2020, Jones voted to convict President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, saying the evidence presented "clearly proves" that Trump used his office to seek to coerce a foreign government to interfere in the election.
Jones was the only statewide elected Democrat in Alabama and the first Democrat to win statewide office since Lucy Baxley was elected President of the Alabama Public Service Commission in 2008. Democrats had not represented Alabama in the U.S. Senate since 1997, when Howell Heflin left office. Jones was considered a moderate Democrat, who supported reproductive and LGBT rights but demonstrated a willingness to work with Republicans and split with his party on certain issues. Jones ran for a full term in 2020 and lost to Republican nominee Tommy Tuberville in a landslide. His margin of defeat was the largest of an incumbent senator since 2010.