Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., announced his bid Tuesday to become the GOP nominee to fill the Senate seat to be vacated by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor.
Moore is an Alabama native and a graduate of the state’s land grant research university, Auburn, where he studied agricultural science. His public service began in college when he joined the ROTC program and was commissioned into the National Guard.
Along with his wife, he founded a successful waste-disposal company in 1998. Moore served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 2010 to 2018. The then-Alabama state legislator was one of the earliest elected officials to publicly endorse President Donald Trump during the latter’s 2016 presidential run, appearing on stage at a Trump rally in August 2015 in Mobile, Alabama.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Moore recalled that fateful day.
“It was odd because we were on the south end of the stadium in an RV, and there was a guy from New York, they had said he had a less than 1% chance to get the nomination. There were 17 in the primary. In fact, he could not beat Hillary Clinton. That’s what the conventional wisdom was. And so we said a quick prayer and got a piece about endorsing a guy from New York City who had no chance of winning,” Moore recalled.
Moore and his daughter Kathleen would go on to both serve as delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2016. The Alabama congressman later said Trump’s team called him to encourage his bid for Congress. Moore was first successfully elected to a House seat in 2020. In the House, he has served on the Judiciary and Agriculture committees and has been a member of the Freedom Caucus and the fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee.
Moore told The Daily Signal that in order to address the housing crisis in the United States, regulations need to be cut to reduce the cost of building materials. The Alabama lawmaker also said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell should be fired, and that the government printing money contributes to inflation, which makes it harder for young families to buy things.
“We need to lower interest rates, because there are a lot of young people right now that started out 10, 12, maybe eight years ago, in a smaller house, but interest rates were 3%. Those families would like to move to a nicer place, and then that frees up a lot of that market for new … homebuyers, first-time homebuyers,” Moore explained.
Moore criticized the lack of transparency regarding the billions of dollars sent to Ukraine during its war against Russia. “We don’t know where it went, and that’s a problem for us. We’re just sending money to wars. It’s like so many things [the] government does. We just send more funding, but we don’t do any management or any oversight. And so President Trump’s leading the tip of the spear with oversight first, and I think managing the process. So that’s good for us,” he said.
The congressman also emphasized the agricultural component of national security.
“When I was in [the] military, two things you needed before you sent your troops out were beans and bullets. We talk a lot about bullets sometimes, but we don’t talk about national security and food. You’ve got to be able to provide for your own nation,” Moore explained.
Moore is the latest Republican to join a crowded primary field that also includes Alabama state Attorney General Steve Marshall, businessman Rodney Walker, and former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson.
In a statement to The Daily Signal, Hudson said, “I entered this race because the people of Alabama deserve a fighter who will stand as the tip of the spear and go to battle for them. I am that warrior. I’m not doing this to pad my resume or rub elbows with the suits in D.C. This is about service.”
“I’m a former Navy SEAL, a sheriff’s deputy, and founder of a nonprofit dedicated to combating human trafficking. Whether it’s crisscrossing Alabama on the campaign trail or serving on the floor of the Senate, my guiding light will be my faith in Jesus Christ and the ethos they taught us in the SEALs: ‘I am never out of the fight, and I will not fail,’” Hudson continued.
Kyle Sweetser, who is seeking the Democrat nomination in the red state, told The Daily Signal that he hoped “to be able to give the folks of Alabama a real option on the Democratic side as someone that’s worked in and out of people’s houses in all kinds of communities and had conversations with people.”
“I want to fight for the people of Alabama that have been forgotten,” Sweetser said.
