What happened in Alabama goes back to the late 1980s. The Democratic ‘machine’ was dying. To win with the competition...you had to go be a fake Republican. Shelby and Sessions were both fake GOP. I would even go and suggest that Luther Strange (the fill-in) probably was attached to enough special interest groups that he was a fake GOP as well.
If you look at the past five or six governors...most of them were fairly corrupted (some enough to go off to prison). The current one....Ivey....probably is 100-percent authentic GOP but in her early 70s. The state has a problem with special interest groups, pro-lottery, pro-casino, etc...so you can’t be sure of nothing much.
Please don't call them 'Democratic'.
There's nothing democratic about the Democrat party.