Doug Jones is the Democratic candidate for governor of Alabama in the upcoming 2026 midterm election. An Alabama native, Jones has served the state in a number of capacities, including as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and, most recently, as U.S. Senator from 2018 to 2021 after winning a 2017 special election for the seat. Jones has centered his gubernatorial campaign on education, healthcare, and economic opportunity for Alabamians. He is currently running against Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who defeated Jones for the seat in the 2020 Senate election.
Jones sat down with the HPR to discuss public service, education, and economic opportunity in Alabama.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
HPR: What was your inspiration for getting into politics and getting into your previous work? Are there any specific life stories or role models that you think really affected what you wanted to do?
DJ: There are several. My interest in politics and public policy started when I was young. I was six years old when John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, and I was just enthralled with him, with his youth, with his vigor, and the fact that he was that new generation of leadership that came through. I was devastated when he was assassinated, and that really pushed me to get engaged, even in junior high and high school, to get into the local stuff.
In college I was involved when Chief Justice Howell Heflin rewrote the Alabama Constitution to modernize the Alabama court system, and I worked on that. I did door-to-door work organizing kids in colleges around the state to try to get that passed as a constitutional amendment, and we did, and that really taught me a lot. It also taught me a lot about Howell Hefflin, who later ran for the Senate, and I worked with him, and then worked with him for a year in Washington D.C. on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Heflin and then another young Alabama attorney general in the ‘70s, Bill Baxley — who prosecuted the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing cases — have been my mentors in Alabama for so, so long. They really taught me that politics is public service. It’s not just politics. It’s not just the ego of holding office. You really have to work for people and not for yourself. That has really instilled in me a dedication to public service throughout my career.
HPR: How would you say your driving factor of being a public servant is helping the public? How would you say that affects your campaign policies nowadays?
DJ: It’s all about my campaign policy. I wouldn’t be in this campaign if it wasn’t for that sense of public service, because I see Alabama as a state with so much potential that we just never seem to quite meet. We’ve got Mobile that does great with the port and Austal and the shipbuilding and the Airbus and all of those companies. We’ve got Huntsville that’s doing great. Birmingham’s doing great with healthcare, and there are places in between. But I see rural Alabama suffering without hospitals. I see Alabama still being at the bottom of the list when it comes to quality of life, the bottom of the list when it comes to healthcare, the bottom of the list when it comes to education, and we can do so much better if we quit getting divided and pitting each other, one against the other.
So, to me, this is an opportunity to bring people together to try to work for a common good and a common goal, and that certainly drives the policies that we’re talking about for governor: whether it is expanding Medicaid, whether it is making sure we invest in education, whether it’s even bringing a lottery to Alabama to bring us in line with the other states and bringing the revenue in. All of that is about the people of Alabama. It’s not about me. It’s not about enriching myself. I’ve never done that as a public servant, unlike a lot of people. It’s about the people in Alabama that need the government to help, and I don’t mean just a handout. I’m talking about government services that can lift them up and move Alabama forward.
HPR: I want to touch on one of your points that you made specifically about the lottery. What type of effort do you think could be made towards getting a lottery passed through legislation, and how would you spend that money?
DJ: Well, first of all, let’s talk about how we get it passed. Alabama has not had a statewide officeholder that has been a champion for a lottery since Don Siegelman left office in 2002. I’m going to be that champion. I’m going to be out there doing it. I think others that’ll get elected will be that champion. So we’ll work with the legislature to pass a constitutional amendment. Remember, the legislature can’t do this alone. All they can do is pass a bill that gives the people of Alabama the right to vote, and why they wouldn’t do that is beyond me — to give Alabama an opportunity to keep that money home when we all know that hundreds of millions of dollars is leaving Alabama every week with a lottery. I think having that champion in the governor’s office with the bully pulpit working with either comprehensive gambling or a standalone lottery bill, we can craft something that will get that passed, and I think it’ll pass relatively soon.
Now, how the money is spent is going to be a subject that we all have to talk about once I can get elected, once we get a new legislature. Everybody knows we’re going to need revenue. There’s a lot of ways that education needs investments right now, so I think that’s the number one way. But you want to write it into the constitution, so the legislature doesn’t get their hands on it to do something else, because I don’t trust them to spend it in areas that I want them to spend it on, and I think the people want it spent on. We may set aside some for some health care because we need it there as well. There’s any number of things we can do. Once we can get elected, and get a new study to see how much money we’re talking about, we can better allocate that money.
HPR: What is the role of education in your policy platform?
DJ: I think education is always perhaps the biggest, if not one of the two or three biggest, components. It’s a big issue for people in Alabama, and it is a big issue for me. Right now Alabama has done some things to move up in the rankings, but it’s only for lower grades like second and third grade. We’ve got to continue to invest to make sure we do the same thing for the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth graders through high school. I think that that is incredibly important. We invested in pre-K programs. We need to get more kids involved. It’s an amazing program that we’ve got. We just don’t have enough kids in there, so I want to continue those investments.
But here’s my biggest concern with where education in Alabama is right now: We seem to be pulling money out of education rather than putting it in. We seem to pull money out under the Choose Act, which has been marketed as parent choice, but it’s not about parent choice. It’s a voucher system that gives taxpayer handouts to people who want to put their kids in private school. Now, I have nothing against private schools. I think we’ve got some great private schools in Alabama, but the fact is, they have their own curricula. They have their own standards. They’re not accountable for any of the money that is given to them under the Choose Act, and I think it’s wrong to take income cap limits off and have taxpayers giving handouts to rich people that pay $100,000 or more to put their kids in a private school, some of whom are already there. They’ve always got that choice, so I’d like to see us phase out the Choose Act and keep that money in the public education system, so that we can continue to do things under what was known as the Raise Act, that can give more money to school systems that have a higher proportion of poverty-level kids, English learning language kids, and kids with special needs. That’s where a lot of this money needs to be directed.
Money going out of the school system — the public, local school system — is going to hurt teachers, it’s going to hurt children, and it’s going to lower the standards of all Alabama. Right now, we just don’t need to be having taxpayer money go out. So that education component, especially K-12, is incredibly important to my platform, and it’ll be an incredibly important piece of my administration.
HPR: One of the the key things that Tommy Tuberville is focusing on is data centers, on which he’s getting mixed feedback. Are you completely against the introduction of data centers? Do you support a slow introduction, or a more regulated introduction? How do your platforms differ?
DJ: Let me cut to the chase here. Tuberville’s getting mixed reactions because he’s saying different things. He starts out saying, “Oh, I’ve been meeting with these tech companies for two years, and this is the future. We’re going to build data centers.” Most of Alabama is concerned about their water, their power, the quality of life in their communities. He said that those concerns are bullcrap. Those are his words, not mine. He says, “Bring us all the data centers you can get.”
Doug Jones has a different approach, and Doug Jones says we need to put a moratorium on the building of data centers so that we can put guardrails. I’m not opposed to data centers. I want communities to have a say. I want them to have full transparency and knowledge. I want no tax breaks to go to these data centers because they’re going to make a gazillion dollars. I want them to put money back in there, but none of that is in place right now. None of that is in place to protect the power usage, such that individual residential customers won’t foot the bill for these things. They’re saying that, but there’s no guardrail in place to make it required. There’s no guardrail in place about water uses. There’s no guardrail in place about noise. If they say they’re going to do X and they end up doing Y, there’s no accountability for that. We have to have a moratorium to put those guardrails in place. It’s the only way to protect communities and give them the say. Some communities will want those; others will not. And I think that the communities have to have a say.
Now, what’s interesting is that Tuberville is getting the mixed signals. He’s getting the feedback. He’s getting the blowback from some of the things he said. So now, all of a sudden, he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to lead the charge against data centers. I’m going to ensure there are no tax breaks for data centers.” That’s what he’s saying now when in fact he’s already voted to give them tax breaks as part of the Big Beautiful Bill. He’s either just spinning this, lying, or doing something. That’s why people’s heads are spinning about what he really stands for; he just stands for whatever the latest poll is telling him.
We’ve been saying this about data centers from the very beginning. I am on the side of the people. I am listening to their concerns. He is on the side of big tech, and you know why? Because he has invested in these companies. He’s got personal investments in these AI companies. He’s taking big money in his campaign from the data center developers. So who can you believe when he said, “Oh, I’m going to lead the charge against them?” You don’t take that kind of money, you don’t have the investments, and then lead your charge. He is misleading the people of Alabama, just like he misled veterans about the fact that he was going to donate his salary to veterans once he got to Washington D.C. He’s made almost a million dollars and never donated a dime.
HPR: What would you say to an aspiring Alabamian who wants to get into public service, become a politician, or do any type of government work?
DJ: I will tell them to get engaged in the political process, but get engaged in public service. A lot of young folks especially get interested in politics. They find it fascinating, and they get like I did with John Kennedy. It’s all about being the president or being the senator or being the governor. But as you get older, you learn that it is truly public service, and you have to find that niche. You have to find what it is that drives you and motivates you for the people in your community. People just need to take their time, look for those things, find those things, or let those things find you. You’d be amazed how things will find you over the course of your life, and don’t be in a rush. If you’re in a rush to do something, then it’s all about you, and it’s not about the people you will ultimately serve.
I’ve been very fortunate in my life to work for the Senate as a staffer, as an assistant U.S. attorney, to come back as the presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, to go back into the United States Senate and hopefully into the governor’s office. But everything that drives me for that is public service and doing things for people. It’s really not about me. I believe Alabama has so much to offer, and if I can help facilitate that, then that’s what I want to do, and that will be the legacy I want to leave.
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