The newest member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Luther Strange of Alabama, is also the first to face the voters. The outcome of today’s runoff election between Strange, cast as the establishment candidate, and Roy Moore, the Bible-quoting, conservative outsider, for the Republican nomination for the Senate could influence the course of the 2018 farm bill.
If Strange loses the runoff, the committee will have to reorganize following the Dec. 12 special election of a new senator, either Moore or Democrat Doug Jones, at a period when the panel could be in the midst of writing the farm bill. While Strange is a supporter of larger federal support for cotton, Moore wants “lower taxes, smaller government and less spending.” Strange is one of four southerners, all Republicans, on the 21-member committee, including Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who chairs the Appropriations Committee. The southerners are a powerful bloc that protects cotton, rice and peanuts, the major crops grown in their region.
It is an open question who would be appointed to the committee if Strange lost. GOP leaders might turn to an incumbent senator from the South, or they could look elsewhere. Given Moore’s firebrand views, he might not see eye to eye with Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts as often as Strange would. Roberts wants a strong crop insurance program and a farm bill that tweaks, rather than overhauls, the 2014 farm law.
One farm group official said the runoff “may not be hugely impactful” on the farm bill because “the South is well-represented” already on the committee, with Cochran, John Boozman of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, along with Strange. Farm bill squabbles tend to be regional rather than partisan—Midwest vs. the South, for example—reflecting the crops grown in each region and the effort to assure no one gets special treatment. A farm policy analyst saw the connection between Alabama’s Senate race and the farm bill as tenuous.
Moore was the top vote-getter in the first round of GOP voting last month, despite President Trump’s endorsement of Strange. In a radio interview on Monday, Trump used the wrong first name for Moore while warning that he “is going to have a very hard time getting elected against the Democrat. Against Luther, they won’t even fight.” An array of populist and hard-right politicians are backing Moore, among them Stephen Bannon, a former White House strategist.
Republicans are the dominant political party in Alabama, so their nominee will start with an advantage in the general election. Seven of the 10 Democrats on the Agriculture Committee face re-election in 2018, with Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota regarded as among the most vulnerable in the Senate.