2nd Congressional District: Dick Brewbaker looks to border, foreign aid in GOP runoff

Former Alabama Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Pike Road, is a Republican candidate for the 2nd Congressional District. (Courtesy Dick Brewbaker)

This is one in a series of profiles of the candidates in the April 16 2nd Congressional District runoff. Tuesday: House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels. Wednesday: Attorney Shomari Figures.  Tomorrow: Attorney Caroleene Dobson.

As former Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Pike Road, walked into an event hosted by the Republican Club of Central Alabama, the first thing he did was shift the crowd’s attention to his wife and son.

“Hello everybody, this is my wife, Ruth, and my son, Ben,” he said before anything else. Voters seemed excited to see them.

And with his opponent at another event, Brewbaker and his wife split up and worked both sides of the room, chatting up the voters at Jan’s Beach House Grill in Montgomery.

Dick Brewbaker

Age: 63

Residence: Pike Road

Occupation: President, Brewbaker Motors

Education: B.S., Economics and U.S. History, Vanderbilt University, 1983.

Party: Republican

Previous political experience/campaign: Alabama House of Representatives, 2002-2006; Alabama Senate, 2010-2018.

Fundraising: Brewbaker raised $1.76 million and spent $1.7 million through March 27.

In an interview before the event started, Brewbaker, who served a term in the Alabama House of Representatives and two terms in the Alabama Senate, said he’s trying to give people a reason to vote for him by staying positive and focusing on the issues. He said that it’s critical with what could be a low-turnout runoff on April 16.

“You’ve got to give people- you can’t just say ‘don’t vote for that guy,’ you’ve got to give people reason to vote for you,” he said.

Brewbaker’s opponent Caroleene Dobson has attacked Brewbaker’s record in the state Legislature. Campaign ads have targeted comments he made about former President Donald Trump, his voting record on tax legislation and his resignation from the Senate Republican caucus over being clotured by the Leadership during debate.

Brewbaker said he did not sponsor those bills, but voted to put the issue on the ballot for Alabamians to make a choice.

“She knows she’s lying about my voting record. I mean, come on. It’s just not worth it to get down in the mud with her, and part of the problem with politics is that voters see a candidate who’s obviously not telling the truth,” he said.

He said that voters can tell “if only one person is doing all the mudslinging,” and that he thinks she’s making a mistake.

“She’s abandoned her positive message. I mean, she’s got a story to tell, but she’s quit telling it,” he said.

Brewbaker in a recent interview focused on national issues, such as abortion, the U.S.-Mexico border, and U.S. aid to Israel and Ukraine.

On international relations, Brewbaker said he feels that “our president has completely lost any sort of moral compass about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are” in the Middle East. He said that it’s “nuts” to support Israel’s right to defend itself but still send aid to Gaza.

“The only way you’re going to have peace is if people think American power is an actual deterrence, not just a theoretical one,” he said.

He compared the conflict to World War II, and said that when the US started bombing, there was “no separation between the sheep and the goats” regarding the civilian death toll, and said civilians are also culpable. 

“It’s terrible. It’s very sad, but it’s hard to blame Israel for telling the civilians in Gaza, ‘you’ve chosen sides,’” he said.

He said that if funding to Israel would be jeopardized by being attached to aid for Ukraine, he wouldn’t support it. He said that while there is no question about U.S. support for Israel, the “water in Ukraine might be a little muddy.” He said it’s morally wrong to drag out a war, and he doesn’t see a plan to end the war with Russia. If he were a lawmaker, he said he would ask for clear goals.

“If we’re there just to degrade the Russian military, and see how long we can drag this out, you’re getting a lot of people killed, civilians and soldiers, on both sides for a questionable moral objective,” he said.

With former President Donald Trump directing Republican members of Congress to kill a border deal until after the election, Brewbaker said he would support sending the National Guard and support personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border to help “make illegal entry to the United States, as close to impossible as we can make it.”

He also said that since the wall on the border is about halfway done, The U.S. should finish building it. Trump constructed 85 miles of new barriers where there were none before, and replaced 373 miles that were smaller and dilapidated, according to PolitiFact. In Jan. 2021, 776 of the 2,000 miles on the border had some sort of barrier.

Brewbaker said he would not necessarily oppose a nationwide ban on abortions, but he would be very cautious about it. He said that while he is anti-abortion, he does not believe it’s a good idea to make it a federal issue again.

“The pro-life movement worked for years to overturn Roe v. Wade, to get it back to the states, and now the dust has barely settled and they want to refederalize it,” he said, adding, “Some people do.”

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