Here’s a question I’ve started to get asked a lot lately: “If he’s elected, what’s a Tuberville Administration going to be like?”
Last year, the settled wisdom went something like this: a Republican governor succeeds a Republican governor, the machinery of government keeps running, and life goes on. Folks were curious about the novelty of a Coach-turned-Senator-turned-
I’d say that fog has burned off. What’s left is intense interest—and no small amount of trepidation—about what a Tuberville administration might mean for entrenched players in the Capital City. Sorting out what will change and who will win or lose is the parlor game of the moment.
One “tell” came on July 24 when the Tuberville campaign announced a nine-member transition team. While it’s tempting to parse the names and their backgrounds, there are two things in the announcement perhaps more significant than the roster.
First, the campaign pointed out—deliberately—that the team includes no lobbyists, no legislators, and no former elected officials. In a state where the same person has governed for nearly a decade, and where transitions have been traditionally staffed by insiders who already know where the light switches are, that is both a choice and a message.
Second, Tuberville’s Chief of Staff, Jordan Doufexis, said bluntly that the group is “not coming to Montgomery to maintain the status quo.” I’ll be the first to say that political talk sometimes comes pretty cheap, but I’d take this one at face value. It aligns with what I know about Team Tuberville.
To be clear, I don’t speak for Coach or his campaign. But as his first Chief of Staff in the Senate, I have a better-than-most sense of the people involved and their priorities. So when I’m asked the question, here’s what I say.
My understanding is that the announced transition team’s duties are far more than collecting resumes, though I’m sure those are piling up. Rather, the group is an agenda-setting catalyst.
I’m told the announced roster is really just the visible tip of an organizational iceberg, representing 11 different policy committees made up of 64 people. Some have been working for the better part of a year. The thinking is clear-minded: quietly get the policy planning and structural reform playbook in place, then find the right personnel to run the plays. Sounds like something a Coach might do, no?
Make no mistake, the reform mindset is real. I don’t get the sense that it is a blanket criticism of the current governing class, who have served the state admirably. But I do think it means that after ten years, someone wants to conduct a performance review — and act on it.
I’ve already heard comparisons to DOGE. Don’t take that too far. While that effort to find savings may have been well-intentioned, its execution came with self-inflicted wounds: moves made faster than they could be defended, good thrown out with the bad, and inevitable reversals. Coach and his team took all of it in from the Russell Senate Office Building.
Learning from those mistakes, I’d expect a different approach—more surgical, more sequenced, hopefully better lawyered, but no less willing to change people, policy, and culture. Methodical on the front end, harder to reverse on the back end. Worth noting: HB220, effective October 1, makes appointees to state boards and commissions serve at the pleasure of the office that appointed them. That tool didn’t exist before this year.
When the time comes, that personnel search for agency heads and supporting staff will be widespread, and I’ve been interested to learn that Team Tuberville is open to recruiting policy experts and reform-minded conservatives from around the country to complement homegrown talent.
But Coach won’t need to look too far for his core senior staff. As many as 26 D.C. alums are preparing to make the move South, and many of those are current or former members of Coach’s Senate office.
A senior team that has been in the trenches together for as long as six years starts day one in Montgomery with the thing most new administrations spend a year building: trust, knowledge of how to work effectively together, and a shared read on what the boss actually wants.
To be sure, Goat Hill is different than Capitol Hill, but I think the skills translate. These staffers have run a Senate office, moved and blocked legislation, managed agencies through oversight, and weathered a fair amount of national media scrutiny. Expect Trump administration alumni to join the mix as well.
And they bring a unique combination of being highly experienced in governing politics and legitimately being outsiders in Montgomery. They didn’t come up through the State House, and they carry no history with agency heads, obligations to the associations, or allegiances to the way things have always been.
As I’ve talked to Montgomery veterans, some have raised an eyebrow or two about all this saying that, to be effective, you have to know how the capital really works. I fully agree. That’s why I think it will be smart to strategically complement the team with like-minded advisors who know Montgomery in and out.
The reason that staffing matters so much stems from how Coach operates. It’s what people often misunderstand, but if you think about it, it makes sense.
Rarely do you see successful head football coaches loudly shouting in every play from the sideline. They hire coordinators, give them direction, and trust the process. It isn’t detachment. It’s a style that empowers people, creates a bias for action, and rewards performance and new ideas. Coach has that chief executive’s mindset, one that, frankly, will suit the governor’s office better than it suited Congress. That’s good for Alabama.
There is, however, one area where I think Coach will be more directly involved: recruiting. Expect him to make economic development, attracting new business, and growing existing ones a focal point.
He’s well-suited for the task. Tuberville is impressive in small settings with people from all walks of life, and I’ve watched him engage a group of school teachers and a dinner table of CEOs with equal ease.
A principal who can actually be a force in that moment is a real asset, and not every state has one.
Alabama’s recent run in aerospace, defense, and biotech—Eli Lilly’s $6 billion investment in Huntsville chief among them—is opening new doors that a good closer can walk through. Existing business weighing an expansion? Site selection team narrowing the list? My advice: get Coach in the room and arm him with the facts.
Of course, all of this is dependent on an election this fall. Tuberville’s team is not taking anything for granted, nor should they. “That’s why they play the game,” as ball players say. I couldn’t agree more.
But for those who must think ahead, let’s dispel the notion that this would simply be a Republican handoff. No, it’d be a whole new game.
Stephen E. Boyd is a Partner at Horizons Global Solutions. Previously, he served as a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, Chief of Staff for Alabama members in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, and as a Communications Director of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Opinions expressed herein are his own. Contact Stephen at [email protected].