Katie Britt favored to capture U.S. Senate seat in Alabama | INSIDE THE STATEHOUSE

Katie Britt is headed to a likely victory to fill Alabama's U.S. Senate seat in next Tuesday’s runoff.

The 40-year-old, first-time candidate garnered an amazing 45% of the vote against two major candidates on May 24. She finished far ahead of second-place finisher Mo Brooks at 29% and third-place holder Mike Durant at 23%. She almost beat them without a runoff.

Britt carried 62 of the 67 counties in Alabama and lost the other five by a slim margin. Britt won overwhelmingly in most of the populous GOP counties in the state. As expected, she ran very well in her native Wiregrass area, receiving 63% in her home county, Coffee.

In contrast, Brooks, her opponent in the runoff, barely carried his home county of Madison by 39% to 36%. In adjacent Limestone County, a suburb county of Madison, the vote count was 7,130 for Brooks to 7,100 for Britt — a 30-vote margin. In short, Brooks was weak in his own congressional district. It appears that home folks know you best.

Those of us who have followed politics in Alabama, and especially in southeast Alabama, have watched Britt grow up in Enterprise. We have all said she has had governor or senator written all over her. She has been a leader her entire life. She was the leader of everything at Enterprise High School, she was governor of Girls State, then she was president of the Student Government Association at the University of Alabama.

Soon after graduating from law school, she went to Washington, D.C., and served five years as U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby's chief of staff. She is about to take that same seat in the U.S. Senate. She is scripted for the role. Britt will hit the ground running and will be an effective conservative voice and advocate for Alabama.

One of the primary reasons Britt won so overwhelmingly is that she outworked all of the others. She started over a year ago, and worked all 67 counties in the state – especially the rural counties.

She won the endorsement of the Alabama Farmers Federation the old-fashioned way. She got out and earned it. She started early and stayed late. She built a grass-roots organization throughout the state, and it propelled her to a tremendous lead on May 24, and it will carry her over the finish line next week.

Britt's runoff opponent, Brooks, is a colorful character, almost comedic. During his almost 40 years in Alabama politics, he has built a legacy as a right-winger, an ineffective ideological gadfly.

He has never passed a bill in his 16 years in the Legislature or 12 years in Congress. He is unbelievably unashamed of his lack of effectiveness or achievement. He likes the mantle of being an ineffective right-wing nut.

Brooks and I served together in the Alabama House of Representatives for 16 years. He was immediately recognized as someone who wanted to accomplish nothing for his Huntsville district. What he wanted to do was sit on the back row and keep other lawmakers' voting record and rank as us on how conservative we were based on his criteria.

You can only imagine how popular he was in the Alabama House. Brooks could not have passed a bill or gotten anything done for Huntsville if he had wanted to. In fact, if we had a bill to pass we would quietly say to Brooks, “I’d like for you to vote for my bill, but please don’t speak for it.”

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Brooks has built on his reputation as an ineffective right wing nut during his tenure in Washington, D.C. They have written him off as a crazy gadfly. Both the Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate leadership in Washington would put Brooks off in a corner and laugh at him.

This would not be good for a state that depends on federal defense dollars. He would be an albatross for our state. When asked about our U.S. Senate race a year ago, when Brooks looked like a player, the witty and wise Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy quipped “A U.S. Senate seat is a terrible thing to waste.”

Folks, under the entrenched Senate seniority system, Alabama would probably be better served with a 40-year-old vibrant, able and conservative senator who can build power and seniority. Alabama would be worse off with a 69-year-old gadfly relegated to the corner of the Senate, who would continue to vote against Alabama's interests, such as defense and agriculture. Brooks’ allegiance would be to the clandestine, right-wing Club for Growth, rather than the interests of Alabamians.

Steve Flowers served 16 years in the Alabama Legislature. Readers can email him at steve@steveflowers.us.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Katie Britt favored to capture U.S. Senate seat | INSIDE THE STATEHOUSE