Opinion | America knows Katie Britt. Now she can focus on Alabama

On Monday, Alabama Senator Katie Britt got a rare second opportunity to introduce herself on the national stage. Offered the chance to make a primetime address at the Republican National Convention, she once again had the nation’s eyes on her.

Even though there’s only a hundred senators, very few people know many from outside their state. For that matter, far too few people know the senators from their state.

Do you know who the senators from Virginia are? I do—Tim Kaine and Mark Warner—but that’s only because I was born in that particular commonwealth.

When a senator gets the chance to introduce themselves to the nation, it can be a make-or-break moment. For Britt, it unfortunately looked like it might have been a break.

Even before Britt delivered the rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union, her comms team was already telling conservatives to compare her to Reagan.

Then she actually went on live TV. Suddenly, everyone in America knew who Katie Britt was. Superstar Scarlett Johansson played the senator in that week’s SNL cold open, an experience Britt now jokingly calls her “gold star.”

Luckily for her, Britt’s speech Monday gave her another chance to talk to the American people, without the dubious fear-mongering and in a more measured voice.

She stuck to party lines in ways I still find distasteful, calling Donald Trump “the change we need” and attacking President Biden, but she also talked about important issues facing American families. Whether or not her comparison of Trump’s economy and Biden’s was totally accurate (it wasn’t), American families have undeniably been struggling with inflation recently.

This second, more successful debut gives Britt a great opportunity. An opportunity to learn from her political mentor and be the senator Alabama needs, if not the senator Alabama wants.

Alabamians want a conservative, fire-eating senator. They have one. They also need a dealmaker who can bring home the bacon.

When Senator Richard Shelby retired, a profile in the New York Times called him “one of the last of the big-time pork barrel legends.” From his seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, he “funded roads and bridges and hospitals and public libraries and drinking water systems” in Alabama.

As a University of Alabama alum, I know just how successful he was firsthand. The over-200,000-square-foot Shelby Hall, a $50 million engineering center, makes an impression.

Before Britt gave Mo Brooks a drumming and entered the Senate, she had worked for Shelby off and on again for years. I hope it’s not too optimistic of me to say that I hope some of Shelby’s attitude might have rubbed off.

During her interview with Axios on Monday, Britt said she wants to support bipartisan bills. And she showed she knows Alabama needs federal money when she told the reporter that “about a third of our state does not have access to maternal care.”

According to the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index, though, she was the least bipartisan senator in 2023. (Her staff members have disputed the metric’s accuracy.)

Meanwhile, her fellow senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is hardly better. Tuberville seems to think bipartisan is some kind of fancy Washington cuss word.

Tuberville voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was easily approved by a bipartisan supermajority. He voted against the CHIPS Act, which 17 Senate Republicans thought was a fine piece of legislation.

If you take a look at the list of Republican senators, Tuberville isn’t exactly the first guy Democrats will approach when they’re looking to pass a nonpartisan bill.

Attacking the troops for being too woke, spreading conspiracy theories about American foreign policy, and holding up military promotions are hardly the way to burnish one’s bipartisan credentials. According to some, his antics actually cost Alabama the opportunity to host the nation’s SPACECOM headquarters.

If Alabama needs federal money, and it does, Tuberville is not the senator to look to for help. Britt on the other hand studied under the best. Hopefully she took notes.

Per The Hill’s latest projections, Republicans are set to hold only 52 seats in the Senate. Folks who paid attention to the Biden White House’s negotiations with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin know just how impactful one senator can be with such a narrow majority.

If Britt is willing to play power broker, I see no reason to believe she couldn’t build more bridges, both between the parties and here in Alabama. She might not have been the logrolling moderate Alabama needs last year, but she’s got four more years in her first term to make friends and make deals.

Of course, no matter what, Senator Britt will support conservative red meat bills I fear will just make people’s lives worse for no good reason.

But I hope she’ll be able to bring some federal money back to Alabama at the same time. God knows the state needs it.