Strange, Luther (1953-…), served as a United States Senator in 2017 and 2018. Strange, a Republican from the Southern state of Alabama , had been appointed to fill the seat of Senator Jeff Sessions . Sessions had resigned after taking office as attorney general of the United States, the nation’s chief law officer. Prior to Strange’s appointment as senator, he had served as Alabama’s attorney general since 2011.
Luther Johnson Strange, III, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 1, 1953. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1975. Strange, who stands 6 feet, 9 inches (2.1 meters), played for the university’s basketball team. He earned a law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1979.
After graduating, Strange began work as a lawyer for Sonat Incorporated, an Alabama-based corporation that specialized in natural gas exploration and transportation. In the 1990’s, Strange worked as a lobbyist for Sonat and other companies, including Transocean Offshore Drilling, which specializes in drilling for petroleum as well as natural gas. A lobbyist is a person employed by a company or a group to try to persuade government officials to vote a certain way. In the mid-1990’s, Strange began working as an attorney in a private law firm. He started his own law office in 2008.
In 2006, Strange was the Republican candidate for Alabama lieutenant governor, but he lost the general election to his Democratic opponent. In 2010, Strange was elected Alabama’s attorney general. He took office in 2011 and was reelected in 2014. As attorney general, Strange worked to expand rights to gun ownership and fought against federal environmental regulations. In February 2017, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley named Strange to replace Sessions in the U.S. Senate.
In September 2017, Strange lost a Republican primary run-off election to Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. Democrat Doug Jones then defeated Moore in a December special election. Jones took office in January 2018 and served through the remainder of Sessions’s Senate term in 2021.
