This is an opinion column.

Last week, I challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville to clear his residency questions once and for all by doing something that most Alabamians would be able to do without any problem — by showing whether he paid state income taxes for each of the last seven years.

To run for the U.S. Senate, he had to live in Alabama only for a day before the 2020 election, but to run for governor in Alabama, residency requirements say a candidate has to live in the state for seven years.

If he truly was an Alabama resident, his income taxes should show it. It’s a chance to lay his cards face up on the table and take the whole pot.

But so far he hasn’t.

Instead, Tuberville has fallen back on a different argument — that his wife’s homestead exemption in Auburn is enough to prove his residency going back to 2018. A homestead exemption is a property tax break homeowners can take on their primary residence.

The trouble is, the Tubervilles’ homestead exemptions might mean less than he thinks, and clinging to that as proof of residency could make new problems for Tuberville he hasn’t considered.

Or to put it another way, if he was living in Alabama in 2018, why was he still voting in Florida in 2018?

Here’s what public records show.

In 2018, Tuberville’s wife, Suzanne, and their son Tucker claimed a homestead exemption on a house in Auburn. (Tommy Tuberville was not on that deed but this is what says is proof of his residency.) However, later that same year, Tuberville and his wife continued to vote in Florida, according to election records.

Tuberville’s homestead messiness doesn’t stop there, either.

More recently, Tuberville put his name on, not one, but two Alabama deeds last year — one in Auburn and another in Madison — each with their own homestead exemptions, according to state property tax records.

If a homestead exemption means residency, then which is it?

It’s a lot to keep up with, and even Tuberville seems to be struggling to keep it all straight.

Let’s put together a timeline, shall we?

On February 10, 2017, Tuberville’s wife Suzanne registered to vote in Walton County, Fla., where they own a $4.8 million beach house.

On March 30, 2017, Suzanne and their son, Thomas Tucker Tuberville (who goes by Tucker) bought the three-bedroom home in Auburn.

On May 24, 2017, two months after the Auburn home purchase, Tommy Tuberville registered to vote in Walton County, Florida, using his Santa Rosa Beach address.

On July 19, 2017, Tuberville recorded a video for ESPN as a promo for his new gig on the network. He filmed the video on his deck overlooking the ocean in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.

“Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and the blue water,” he said. “What a great place to live.”

In October 2018, Tucker and Suzanne (not Tommy) began claiming a homestead exemption on the Auburn house.

On November 6, 2018, a month after Suzanne and Tucker claimed the homestead in Auburn, both Tommy and Suzanne Tuberville voted in Walton County, Fla.

If Suzanne Tuberville’s Auburn homestead exemption is proof of where Tuberville lives, then at this point, he’s voting in the wrong state. She was, too.

On March 28, 2019, Tuberville registered to vote in Alabama at the Auburn address owned by his wife and son, Alabama election records show.

On April 6, 2019, less than two weeks after changing his voter registration, Tuberville announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate.

On May 2, 2019, Tuberville told talk radio host Dale Jackson that he moved back to Alabama in August of 2018.

“I moved back about, I would say, probably, full-time, end of August,” Tuberville said.

Jackson noted that Tuberville voted in Florida in November of that year, which Tuberville did not dispute. Jackson asked Tuberville whether he voted for Matt Gaetz, and Tuberville said he voted for the full Republican ticket.

In the interview, Tuberville claimed that he moved to Florida because it had better airport access for his ESPN duties, despite saying in his ESPN promo video that he moved to Florida six months before taking that job.

August 3, 2019, Tuberville told the Shoals Republican Club, “Yes, I am not an every-day resident of Alabama. That’s going to be brought up. I have been here for most of the last 20 years. I have property. So you’ll see that on TV. So he’s a carpetbagger? Yep. I’m a carpetbagger of this country.”

March 6, 2020: Former Alabama Senator and candidate for his old seat, Jeff Sessions, questioned Tuberville’s residency, calling him “Florida Man” in attack ads. However, Senate residency requirements allow officials to serve if they have lived in Alabama for one day before Election Day. Democratic incumbent Doug Jones continued this attack in the general election.

On April 30, 2020, in a livestreamed Alabama Republican Party forum, Tuberville told state GOP Chairwoman Terry Lathan that he owned an Alabama home on Lake Martin. Property records show he sold that house a year and half earlier, on August 29, 2018.

On Nov. 3, 2020, Tommy Tuberville won election to the U.S. Senate.

On Aug. 10, 2023, the Washington Post again questioned Tuberville’s residency. A Post investigation found that Tuberville had sold all Alabama property in his name, that Susanne Tuberville had continued to work as a real estate agent licensed in Florida but not Alabama, and that campaign records showed him spending extensive time on the Florida coast. Subsequent U.S. Senate records have shown Tuberville making frequent trips to the Florida panhandle.

On January 26, 2024, Tommy Tuberville and the Tuberville’s other son, Troy, bought a home in Madison, Ala., and put both their names on the deed. Property tax records show an H1 homestead exemption on the property.

On May 7, 2024, the Tubervilles filed a quit claim deed in Lee County, taking Tucker Tuberville’s name off the Auburn house and adding Tommy Tuberville to the new deed. Tommy and Suzanne Tuberville claimed an H4 homestead exemption on that house.

If a homestead exemption on a deed is proof of residence, then Tubeville now appears to be living in two places at the same time.

Tuberville’s homestead exemptions are less than proof of where he’s lived. They’re messy and contradictory, especially when paired with his voting record.

And even Tuberville seems less than sure that they’re enough.

Speaking to Alabama Daily News this week, Tuberville may have tipped his hand. In that interview, he claimed that the law requires him to live a total of seven years in Alabama, not all seven years leading up to the election.

“You can go back to, as long as you’ve had a seven year…I was at Auburn 10 years and so I lived there for 10 years in a row,” Tuberville said. “So it’s not your last seven years.”

There’s no reason for him to have said that unless he wasn’t sure he could prove he’s been in Alabama for the last seven years.

But the seven-years-total argument is flimsy, too.

The Alabama Constitution requires candidates for governor to be residents “at least seven years next before the date of their election.”

What does “next before” mean?

It’s not a typo. According to Alabama Code 1-1-1, which sets definitions of Alabama law, “next before” and “preceding” are synonymous things.

In making his case off the cuff, Tuberville seems to have told on himself again.

So what does that leave us?

It’s time for Tuberville to show, not tell.

If Tuberville believed he lived in Alabama in 2018, he should have state income tax records to show that, and the same for every year after.

Unless, of course, he was living in Florida, which doesn’t have state income taxes.

If he wants to show where he’s lived, he needs to show us his taxes. And while he’s at it, it wouldn’t hurt to show his utility bills, too. Where he flushes his toilet probably tells us more than his homestead exemption.

He can do it now. Or he can wait for a political challenger to take him to court.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X , Threads and Bluesky.