Establishment candidate Katie Britt has backed out of a debate with her MAGA-aligned opponent, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), ahead of the Alabama GOP’s Senate Primary run-off, which will pit the two candidates head-to-head. Britt had previously committed to a debate held by a local NBC affiliate and, during primary season, said that candidates who don’t debate don’t deserve the support of voters. Katie Britt has been dubbed “Alabama’s Liz Cheney” by Donald Trump Jr. and her run for the US Senate is being funded by a pro-abortion megadonor.
Republican candidates Katie Britt and Rep. Mo Brooks will face one another in the Alabama GOP’s run-off on June 21st to determine the party’s midterm nominee for US Senate. In the initial primary, the two finished ahead of a large field of candidates but neither won more than 50% of the vote, necessitating the run-off under Alabama’s election rules. Though Britt won more votes than Brooks in that contest, Brooks split support with another America First candidate, and those voters are expected to come over to his column in droves, off-put by Britt’s deep establishment ties.
Katie Britt had committed to debating Mo Brooks in a debate hosted by Alabama NBC affiliate WVTM 13, but backed out in a statement published by the news station. Though Britt claimed that she wouldn’t debate Brooks because “he wants a circus” and indicated that she is unable to withstand his “personal attacks,” she resorted to dropping her own personal attacks against Brooks throughout the statement and did nothing to refute any of the evidence-backed claims that Brooks and his surrogates have made regarding her political record and left-wing affiliations.
“Mo Brooks doesn’t want a debate,” Britt said in her statement to WVTM 13. “He wants a circus. That’s the only thing he’s capable of,” the statement went on before calling Brooks, who has one of the most conservative records of any legislator in DC, a “do-nothing” and accusing him of “embarrassing our state” with his America First campaign. Bizarrely, Britt then attempted to cast herself as the true America First candidate in the race, despite being endorsed by Sen. Lindsey Graham and bankrolled by Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Prior to running for Senate, Britt served as Chief of Staff to outgoing GOP establishment Senator Richard Shelby, whose seat in DC she’s now hoping to win. In 2017, Shelby torpedoed the US Senate campaign of Judge Roy Moore, publicly disavowing the candidate and voting for a “distinguished Republican write-in” instead, something Brooks hammered Britt with at their previous debate, where Britt evaded questions regarding her own personal voting record. In 2017, the margin of victory for Democrat Doug Jones was less than that of the number of write-in votes cast, effectively proving that the GOP establishment handed the crucial Senate seat over to Democrats on a silver platter.
After Britt backed out of the debate, the Brooks campaign released a scathing statement, remarking that her “flip-flops are too numerous to count” and calling her candidacy a “weak” one.
“Katie Britt’s flip-flops are too numerous to count. In the primary, she said a candidate who won’t debate should not get any citizen’s vote. Now, yet again, she flip-flops as she gets more shrill, more negative, and more vitriolic,” Brooks’ statement says before questioning how someone too afraid to take on another Republican in Alabama is going to take on Democrats in DC.
“[…]If she is too weak to stand on a stage and take Mo Brooks on, how can anyone expect her to take on Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, or any of the other Socialist Democrats that are destroying America? Katie Britt’s debate refusal is an admission of profound weakness at a time America needs fighters in the U.S. Senate, not pushovers.”