Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) is avoiding discussion of his past in his campaign for U.S. Senate according to the Montgomery Advertiser’s Brian Lyman. In a profile on Strange published Thursday in the Advertiser, Alabama’s largest daily newspaper, Lyman noted Strange isn’t talking much about his past, particularly in promoting his campaign for U.S. Senate. It’s a deliberate strategy. In a brief phone interview Wednesday, the U.S. senator said that he believed voters wanted to hear more about his stands. “I think people are focused on the issues,” said Strange. “And the issues that are top of the list is who’s best qualified to support the president’s agenda.” But it’s also a strategy that in the past has allowed opponents — sometimes successfully, sometimes not — to define Strange, focusing on his past as a successful lobbyist; as former Gov. Robert Bentley’s appointed successor and as an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blamed in some conservative circles for the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Strange’s time as a lobbyist is well documented. Lyman noted Strange’s role at Sonat Inc., a Birmingham-based oil and natural gas company, where he ran the firm’s Washington DC office. In 2002, Strange was writing checks to multiple