Doug Jones Wins Alabama Senate Seat
In a victory none could have predicted just a few months ago, Democrat and former prosecutor Doug Jones on Tuesday won a seat in the Senate in Alabama. He defeated fiery conservative Roy Moore, who was haunted by allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced in the last month of the campaign.
Moore had been leading in the polls. But in the last month, nine women have accused him of pursuing or sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties. One woman told the Washington Post that Moore molested her when he was 32 and she was 14. Moore has said that he did not date underage women, and that all the allegations against him are “completely false.” Many Republican women in Alabama believed him, arguing that the allegations were a liberal plot against him.
Before the allegations came to light, Moore, 70, had made a name for himself as a crusader for Christian values, developing a loyal following in the Bible Belt. In 2003, he was removed from his seat on the state Supreme Court for refusing to take down a monument of the Ten Commandments there. More than a decade later, he was removed again when he would not issue marriage licenses to gay couples, defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision. In addition to the accusations against him, his radical views - on Islam, homosexuality, and slavery - alienated many mainstream Republicans. President Trump, however, stood by him, endorsing him last week.
Jones, 63, rose to prominence as a U.S. attorney in Alabama when he prosecuted members of the Klu Klux Klan who had helped to orchestrate the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church which killed four black girls.
The special election was held to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, who was tapped to be Trump’s attorney general earlier this year. Former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley appointed Luther Strange, then the state’s attorney general, to fill the seat, but Strange lost to Moore in the primary.
On Tuesday night, Jones tweeted his thanks to the people of his state.
Thank you ALABAMA!!
- Doug Jones (@GDouglasJones) December 13, 2017
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