Former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak Endorses Doug Jones

From the Jones campaign

October 30

Birmingham, AL – Retired Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps and a lifelong Republican, endorsed Doug Jones for governor Wednesday in an op-ed for AL.com.

Krulak measured both candidates against a standard he upheld throughout his 36 years in the Marine Corps: keeping your word to the people you serve.

Krulak criticized Tuberville for failing to fulfill his campaign promise to donate his Senate salary to Alabama veterans. “Every dime. There was nothing complicated about the promise,” Krulak wrote.

In 2023, Tuberville blocked hundreds of military promotions for ten months, including the nomination for Commandant of the Marine Corps, the same office Krulak held. “The men and women who devote their lives to defending this Nation should not be used as leverage in somebody else’s political fight,” Krulak wrote. Tuberville also voted twice against the PACT Act, which expanded health care for veterans sick from burn pits and other toxic exposure.

For Krulak, his support for Jones comes down to how Jones showed up for military families while he was in the Senate. 

For nearly 20 years, the Military Widows Tax kept surviving spouses of fallen service members from receiving the full benefits they were owed, including more than 2,000 surviving spouses in Alabama. Jones and Republican Senator Susan Collins led the Military Widow’s Tax Elimination Act, which had 78 bipartisan Senate cosponsors. The repeal became law under President Trump as part of the 2020 defense bill. “Doug Jones didn’t just tell military families he stood with them. He took up their cause and did the work,” Krulak wrote.

Krulak, a decorated combat veteran who later served as president of Birmingham-Southern College, wrote that political party has never been his measure of a leader. “Doug Jones has earned my trust,” he wrote.

“When those Gold Star widows first came to my office, nobody on my staff thought we had a chance. Congress had been making them promises for 20 years and never keeping them,” Jones said. “When the repeal finally passed, I had those widows up in the balcony, and it’s still the proudest moment of my time in the Senate. General Krulak knows better than anyone that you keep your word to the people who served this country and the families they leave behind. That’s the kind of governor I’ll be.”

Read General Krulak’s full op-ed HERE.