On one side of the divide is Brooks, a Freedom Caucus firebrand and one of the GOP’s most vocal supporters of overturning the 2020 election results. On the other is Katie Britt, a former business association president and former aide to retiring Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), a giant in Alabama politics who has told others that he is willing to spend $5 million of his own campaign funds on her election.

The faceoff reprises historic divisions that have long bedeviled Republican primaries in the South, pitting the conservative economic development wing of the party, exemplified by Britt and Shelby, who has served as the most powerful Republican Senate appropriator since 2018, and a fiercer brand of conservatism, represented by Brooks, that seeks to disrupt the U.S. Capitol to force more conservative policies. It’s a split that often has less to do with policy positions in a state that Trump won with 62 percent of the vote — all the candidates in the race are Bible-believing conservatives — than style.

“It’s country club versus country,” said David Mowery, a Montgomery, Ala.-based political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats. “There is a weird dynamic where a lot of your business folks are also social conservatives. They just don’t want to be gauche about it. Wearing a .44 on your belt, a Ten Commandments T-shirt and a tricorner hat is outré.”