United States Senate election in Alabama, 1996
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The Alabama United States Senate election of 1996 was held on November 5. It was marked by the election of just the second Republican Senator from the state since Reconstruction.
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[edit] Democratic Party nomination
Three-term incumbent Howell Heflin decided not to seek re-election. A 75-year old moderate-to-conservative Democrat, who was re-elected in 1990 with over 60% remained to date the last member of the Democrat party who won a Senate seat in Republican-turning Alabama (his colleague, Richard Shelby, elected twice as a Democrat, switched to Republican in 1994 and still remains in Senate).
Candidates:
- State Senator Roger Bedford
- Congressman Glen Browder
- Marilyn Q. Bromberg
- Professor Natalie Davis
In the primary, set on June 4, none of these candidates won majority, which resulted runoff.
- Bedford - 141,360 (44.77%)
- Browder - 91,203 (28.89%)
- Davis - 71,588 (22.67%)
- Bromberg - 11,573 (3.67%)
Runoff (June 25):
- Bedford - 141,747 (61.59%)
- Browder - 88,415 (38.41%)
[edit] Republican Party nomination
Candidates:
- Jimmy Blake
- Walter D. Clark
- State Senator Albert Lipscomb
- State Senator Sid McDonald
- Democratic nominee for U.S. House 1st district Frank McRight
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions
- Businessman and frequent Democratic candidate Charles Woods
In the primary, held the same day as the Democratic primary, no candidate won a majority:
- Sessions - 82,373 (37.81%)
- McDonald - 47,320 (21.72%)
- Woods - 24,409 (11.20%)
- McRight - 21,964 (10.08%)
- Clark - 18,745 (8.60%)
- Blake - 15,385 (7.06%)
- Lipscomb - 7,672 (3.52%)
Runoff (held the same day as the Democratic run-off):
- Sessions - 81,681 (59.26%)
- McDonald - 56,156 (40.74%)
[edit] Other nominations
Mark Thornton was a candidate of the Libertarian Party. He had been his party's nominee for the 3rd congressional district in 1984.
Charles R. Hebner was a candidate of Natural Law Party.
[edit] General election
- Jeff Sessions (Republican) - 786,436 (52.45%)
- Roger Bedford (Democratic) - 681,651 (45.46%)
- Mark Thornton (Libertarian) - 21,550 (1.44%)
- Charles R. Hebner (Natural Law) - 9,123 (0.61%)
- Others - 633 (0.04%)
Sessions was re-elected in 2002 and is up for re-election in 2008.
