WASHINGTON – As talk of U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s potential run for Alabama governor has grown over the last several weeks, so have questions about the residency of the Republican who also has a home in the Sunshine State.
But public records recently obtained by Alabama Daily News may put some of those questions to rest.
Alabama’s constitution requires that those who serve as governor must be “resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”
The residence in Auburn that Tuberville calls his home has had a homestead exemption applied to it since 2018, Alabama Daily News recently learned.
The Tubervilles have had a homestead exemption on their home on Cherry Street since they purchased it in 2018, the Lee County Revenue Commissioner’s Office told Alabama Daily News in response to an open records request for the information.
Asked if this new information puts to rest any concerns about his residency as he decides his future plans, Tuberville told Alabama Daily News it does.
“There’s not any problem with that,” Tuberville told ADN outside the Senate chamber Monday.
The senator said he is “100%” eligible to run for the state’s top job as it relates to residency requirements.
“I wouldn’t even be thinking about this if I wasn’t,” Tuberville told ADN.
Records show the home was purchased in the name of Suzanne Tuberville, the senator’s wife, and their son, Tucker Thomas Tuberville. The senator’s name was recently added, and the son’s removed, according to online records.
The Tubervilles own two properties in Walton County on the Florida panhandle, according to records from the county appraiser’s office.
But that office confirmed to Alabama Daily News that neither property has had a homestead exemption filed by Tuberville in the last seven years.
Records did show a homestead exemption in 2023 in Santa Rosa Beach, but that was because the Tubervilles purchased the property that year and the previous owner had the exemption. In 2024, the exemption came off, the office told ADN.
The couple has owned a beach home in Santa Rosa Beach for nearly two decades, property records show. But 2018 was the last year the Tubervilles claimed a homestead exemption there. By 2019, it was removed.
Tuberville faced residency questions when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2020, but the rules for governor are a bit different. Gubernatorial candidacy requirements are set in the state constitution.
“The governor and lieutenant governor shall each be at least thirty years of age when elected, and shall have been citizens of the United States ten years and resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election,” it says.
Tuberville first came to Alabama in 1999 when he was hired to be Auburn’s head football coach. He remained in that job through 2008, later coaching at Texas Tech and Cincinnati and retiring from coaching in 2016.
Tuberville said his prior residency going back to 1999 would count toward the seven year requirement. The constitution does not specify that the seven years must be congruous to the election year.
“You can go back to, as long as you’ve had a seven year…I was at Auburn 10 years and so I lived there for 10 years in a row,” Tuberville told ADN. “So it’s not your last seven years.”
There’s no definition of residency in state law as it applies to gubernatorial candidates. Residency is first a question for the political parties, who qualify candidates for the ballot.
Every year prior to an election, the ALGOP approves a primary resolution, outlining the next year’s contest. In the 2022 primary resolution, it said candidates must certify that they “possess the qualifications fixed by law for said office.” The ALGOP summer meeting usually takes place in August.
There is a window for people to challenge a candidate’s qualifications with the party.