Luther Strange (born March 1, 1953, Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.) is an American politician who was appointed as a Republican to the U.S. Senate from Alabama in 2017 and held the office until 2018. He previously served (2011–17) as the state’s attorney general.
Strange studied political science at Tulane University (B.A., 1975), which he attended on a basketball scholarship. His athletic prowess and height (6 feet 9 inches [2.06 metres]) earned him the nickname “Big Luther.” After graduating from Tulane University Law School in 1979, Strange went to work for Sonat, Inc., an energy holding company headquartered in Birmingham. He headed the firm’s Washington, D.C., lobbying office before returning to Alabama to enter private practice. Strange eventually founded his own law firm, specializing in legal issues related to economic development. He also became a strong advocate for his home state’s economic advancement, recruiting several firms to relocate to or establish branch offices and factories in Alabama. During this time Strange married, and he and his wife, Melissa, later had two children.
Strange was active in Republican Party politics, and in 1997 he founded the Red Mountain Republicans, an organization of business-oriented Republicans in the Birmingham area. In 2006 he entered the race for the lieutenant governorship but narrowly lost. Strange then ran for attorney general in 2010, and his campaign focused on prosecuting political corruption and official malfeasance. He upset the Republican incumbent in the primary and won the general election. Strange took office the following year and was reelected in 2014.
As attorney general, Strange was involved in the multistate lawsuit against BP following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010). The eventual settlement for Alabama, which was officially approved in 2016, was valued at some $2 billion. His office was also engaged in corruption cases. It notably prosecuted Michael G. Hubbard, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives, and won a conviction (2016) on felony ethics charges that resulted in Hubbard’s removal from government. Strange was noted for his conservatism. In 2012 he joined the Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic television network, in its lawsuit against the federal government, challenging the PPACA’s requirement that employers provide birth control to employees through their health insurance; the mandate was effectively struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), which ruled that it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In 2016 Strange joined with a coalition of Republican attorneys general trying to overturn a federal regulation requiring that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identified.
In early 2017, when Jeff Sessions retired from the Senate to serve as U.S. attorney general, Gov. Robert Bentley picked Strange as his replacement. The appointment—as well as Bentley’s rejection of an early special election, thereby allowing Strange to serve until the regular election in 2018—led some critics to accuse them both of conflicts of interest. Bentley was in the midst of a sex scandal, and efforts to impeach him had been put on hold in November 2016, at the request of Strange, whose office was investigating the matter. Despite concerns, Strange was sworn in as senator on February 9, 2017. After Bentley resigned in April, a special election for the Senate seat was scheduled for later that year. In September Strange was defeated by controversial judge Roy Moore in a primary runoff, despite having the support of the Republican establishment and Pres. Donald Trump; Moore ultimately lost the special election. Strange provided an important vote in the passage of a massive tax reform bill before leaving the Senate in January 2018.