Trump Wants to Derail Sessions. Now Alabama Will Have The Final Say.

ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — For a moment, the whole room was on his side.

Scores of voters applauded vigorously on Saturday morning as Jeff Sessions recounted the highlights of his two-decade Senate career as a conservative Republican, like the time he led the charge against Obama-era trade legislation, or the many occasions he blunted his own party’s efforts at immigration reform.

But then, as Mr. Sessions turned to his brief tenure as President Trump’s attorney general — his decision to recuse himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, his ensuing banishment from the president’s orbit — his momentum, as it so often did at this juncture of his stump speech, sputtered.

“I know the president’s not happy with me,” Mr. Sessions said of his recusal. “But I’ll tell you: I did the right thing.”

Judging by the fidgeting silence that followed, voters were not so sure.

It was the kind of abrupt tonal shift in crowd reaction that Mr. Sessions has faced time and again in his long-shot bid to reclaim his old Senate seat, which will be decided Tuesday in a runoff election between Mr. Sessions and his Republican opponent, Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach. Voters often cheer the ways Mr. Sessions advanced the Trump agenda while in office, only to suddenly recoil at the reminder of his falling out with the man himself. The runoff seems destined to be a final word of sorts on the yearslong Sessions-Trump melodrama, with Alabama Republicans refereeing between a native son and a president they admire.