Alabama's U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville a Florida man. No thanks.

So, it turns out that Florida has three U.S. senators who live in the state.

We’re supposed to have two, but we ended up with a spare. Coach Tommy.

The good citizens of Alabama used their collective judgment to install former Auburn University football coach, Tommy Tuberville, as one of their two U.S. senators three years ago.

The election wasn’t even close. Coach Tommy got 60 percent of the vote, even though there was a strong indication that he was operating at a Herschel Walker level of cognition. During the campaigns for the primary and general elections, Coach Tommy refused to participate in any debates and failed to complete written questionnaires about his policy positions on issues.

And when he opened his mouth, a lot of stupid fell out, like his contention that more Muslim terrorists than Central Americans were pouring over the Southern border.

“I’ve been in the cities, folks, you can’t drive through a neighborhood. Why? Because terrorism has taken over. Sharia law has taken over,” he said on the campaign trail. “Folks, there are places you can go in this country that you’re not wanted. In our country. I mean this is not the Middle East.”

OK, maybe Herschel Walker was more informed and less of a bigot.

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At any rate, Tuberville was hardly the guy to be complaining about people crashing borders. He was running to represent Alabama while living across the state border in a waterfront home in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., a home he had owned since 2012.

We know this because he had announced his farewell to Alabama on the air at ESPN in 2017, during his brief stint as a commentator.

“Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., with the white sands and blue waters. What a great place to live,” Tuberville said.

He used property he had still owned in Alabama to run for office in 2020. But as the Washington Post reported this past week, he has since sold his Alabama property and now is a full-fledged Florida man.

All ours. Our third senator. Except he’s still counting for Alabama.

This kind of thing happens to us in Florida from time to time.

Wink Hartman, an oilman from Kansas, was running for a congressional seat in Wichita in 2010 while he had a Florida driver license, a valid Palm Beach County voter registration and a homestead exemption (only available for primary residences) on a house he and his wife owned in Highland Beach.

We ought to be on guard for these border-crossers. Maybe even consider some sort of registration, ankle-bracelet monitoring, or catch-and-release policy.

I probably wouldn’t be complaining so much if we ended up with one of the smart senators. Or even one from one of the Dakotas, two states that clearly don’t deserve the over-representation they are getting.

Consider this: The whole population of North Dakota is about half the population of Palm Beach County — which is Florida’s third most populous county.

But getting Tuberville, well, that’s the booby prize. He is arguably the most embarrassing member of a body that has a deep bench of knuckleheads — and I’m not just talking about Ted Cruz and Kyrsten Sinema.

Florida, in particular, already has a full complement of underwhelming senators in Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. Tuberville would be the Shemp on our pre-existing Moe and Larry.

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Tuberville’s main contribution in office so far is to single-handedly hold up all Senate confirmations for hundreds of promotions of top-military officers as a protest to the military’s policy to pay for travel expenses to women personnel who get abortions.

Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin complained that Tuberville’s hold has created vacancies at the top of three branches of the service, a circumstance that is hurting the operation of the military and putting the command structure in dangerous limbo.

“This sweeping hold is undermining America’s military readiness. It’s hindering our ability to retain our very best officers,” Austin said. “And it’s upending the lives of far too many American military families.”

It’s no wonder why Alabamans are not complaining that Tuberville lives in another state. He’s one less embarrassment to worry about.

For those of you keeping score at home, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley resigned in 2017 rather than face an impeachment hearing over an affair he had been having with a female political adviser. He was, of course, a prior winner of the Christian Coalition of Alabama’s Statesmanship Award.

But I prefer to remember Bentley as the governor who spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to dispatch a state helicopter to fetch his wallet, which he had forgotten at home that day.

I’d look for him to end up in Florida, too, unless we start protecting our border from this kind of riff-raff.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, a part of the USA TODAY Florida Network.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville is Florida's third senator