By David Wright, CNN

(CNN) — Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville announced Tuesday he is running for governor of Alabama in 2026, as the former college football coach and staunch President Donald Trump ally eyes a new role outside Washington after a single term in office.

“A few years ago I decided to give back to this great country and fight,” Tuberville told Fox News on Tuesday. “President Trump was a guy that really was behind me in doing the Senate race, he’s been behind me ever since, and today I will announce that I will be the future governor of the great state of Alabama.”

He continued, “Now, I’ve still got 18 months to go with President Trump to make America great again, we got a lot of work to do. Monday we’ll go back and pass the big beautiful bill for President Trump, but I’m doing this to help this country and the great state of Alabama.”

Tuberville publicly wrestled with the decision and said last month that he’d “just look and see, you know what best fits Alabama – can I go back there and get more done there on a different level?”

The senator faced apparent objections from the president’s team, telling CNN that people close to Trump had urged him to stay in the Senate and forgo a gubernatorial bid because “I’m on his team.” Trump, though, hadn’t weighed in directly, and Tuberville said Tuesday that the president was “fully supportive” of his bid.

“We got a lot of work to do nationally, I’m looking forward to that with President Trump, he’s got us on the right track. But meantime, I’ll be running, every weekend, doing the things I need to do to make sure that I can get over the threshold and win this governor’s race, come back to Alabama, and work with President Trump, and not stop - because he’s fully supportive of this. To keep making America great again and put Alabama first,” he said.

Tuberville, who received Trump’s endorsement in his 2020 Senate primary runoff against former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, enters the race as a clear frontrunner to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Kay Ivey, having transformed his public profile from former football coach at Auburn University to fierce defender of Trump in the Senate. The Club For Growth, an influential conservative organization, endorsed his bid ahead of his announcement.

During his time in the Senate, Tuberville drew scrutiny for his hold on military promotions under the Biden administration, part of a protest over the administration’s policies on reproductive rights. And amid recent criticism of Trump’s acceptance of a gift luxury jet from the Qatari government, Tuberville remarked, “Free is good. You know, we don’t have a lot of money right now to buy things like that.”

While Tuberville’s exit will remove a key backer of Trump in the Senate, Republicans are heavily favored to retain the seat in deep-red Alabama next year. The opening is likely to set off a competitive primary among ambitious state Republicans, with Attorney General Steve Marshall having expressed interest in the event of a Tuberville gubernatorial bid.

“There’s an interest there,” Marshall said during an interview this month on Alabama Public Television, “but we’ll wait and see what Coach Tuberville does, and then be prepared to answer that question fully as the dominoes fall.”

Other potential Republican contenders for Tuberville’s seat include Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who briefly entertained a bid in 2020, and a roster of US representatives who would have to be tempted to relinquish safe House seats.

And it was only six years ago that the state had a Democratic senator: Doug Jones. Asked by CNN last month about whether he might try to run for the seat, which he won in a 2017 upset special election but then lost to Tuberville, Jones left the door wide open.

“I am going to stay in the fight. I am not done trying to help serve the people of this country and the people of Alabama,” Jones said. “Where that takes me I cannot say right now. There’s a lot to think about. There’s a lot to pull into. It’s still early on every front.”

Jones, who lost his reelection bid to Tuberville by 20 points in 2020, said for a Democrat to be competitive in the state, “clearly it’s an uphill battle.” He argued that the response to Trump moves might make next year different for a Democrat hoping to win

“If you’d asked me that six months ago, I would have probably said ‘Absolutely not,’” he said. “With everything that’s going on with this administration, with how it’s affecting farmers, with how it’s affecting health care, with how it’s affecting government workers – I think there’s a lot of changes. I’ve said all along, sooner or later, some of this is going to start catching up to Republicans in Alabama.”

CNN’s Manu Raju and Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.

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