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Alabama Senate Race, Unlikely Nail-Biter, Races to Finish Line Alabama Senate Race, Unlikely Nail Biter, Races to Finish Line
(about 5 hours later)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In a blur of television ads, conflicting polls and presidential tweets, Doug Jones and Roy S. Moore raced on Monday to make their final pleas in Alabama’s special election for the Senate, with both candidates focused on turning out their party’s most loyal voters. MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — Roy S. Moore rallied rural conservatives, and Doug Jones made his closing argument to a diverse crowd in Birmingham as Alabama’s most unpredictable, volatile and off-the-rails Senate race in memory shuddered to a close ahead of Tuesday’s special election.
The trajectory of the campaign has grown cloudier, rather than clearer, with the approach of Election Day. Mr. Moore, a Republican former judge, and Mr. Jones, a former prosecutor who is the Democratic nominee, have seesawed in the polls. Strategists on both sides acknowledge that it is exceptionally difficult to predict who will show up in an unusual December vote. “We have explored the temples built by the Democrat and Republican Party in this country and found that they have idols who do not hear us and do not see us,” Mr. Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls, said Monday night at an event in Alabama’s Wiregrass region, near the Florida border.
With turnout a giant question mark, Mr. Jones has put his focus in the homestretch overwhelmingly on energizing African-American voters. After rallying with prominent black Democrats over the weekend, including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Mr. Jones was scheduled to appear on Monday in the state’s two biggest cities, Birmingham and Montgomery, which both have black majorities. Along with the theatrics of the last day, the state, by turns energized and exhausted, faced a barrage of television ads, conflicting polls, presidential tweets and last-minute pleas.
Campaigning Monday morning at a Birmingham diner, where reporters and photographers vastly outnumbered patrons, Mr. Jones attempted to balance his get-out-the-vote appeals to Democrats with outreach to Republicans. He held up Senator Richard C. Shelby’s eyebrow-raising interview on CNN over the weekend, in which Mr. Shelby, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation, denounced Mr. Moore and said Alabama “deserves better.” But on the eve of the vote, with huge implications for both parties and for President Trump, the blur of campaign tactics did little to clarify the contest’s trajectory.
“The people of the state, they have elected Richard Shelby for four decades,” Mr. Jones said. “They’re going to listen to Richard Shelby.” The Alabama secretary of state, John H. Merrill, said he expected a modest turnout of 20 to 25 percent — it was about 64 percent in the 2016 presidential election. Local officials have reported an unusually high number of requests for absentee ballots, but Democratic and Republican strategists said it was exceptionally difficult to predict who, exactly, would ultimately cast votes in a rare mid-December special election.
Mr. Shelby, who has said he would write in an unnamed Republican rather than vote for Mr. Moore, is one of the few elected G.O.P. officials in the state to openly abandon their party’s embattled Senate nominee. And so with turnout the biggest riddle, both Mr. Jones and Mr. Moore scrambled Monday to shore up support where they could. After dark, Mr. Moore rallied supporters in this rural area of southeast Alabama, a near-certain trove of Republican votes. Mr. Jones, who spent his weekend appearing with prominent black Democrats, campaigned in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama’s two most populous cities, to try to energize urban and African-American voters who would be central to a Democratic victory.
Mr. Jones was less voluble when it came to another last-minute turnout tactic: an automated phone call that former President Barack Obama recorded for his campaign. Mr. Jones’s advisers are deciding today whether to deploy the message to help mobilize Democrats. Mr. Jones appeared unenthusiastic about highlighting the involvement of an out-of-state figure who is locally polarizing. Mr. Jones, a former United States attorney who also needs support from independent and Republican voters if he is to win on Tuesday, tried to balance his get-out-the-vote appeals to Democrats with outreach to people who ordinarily would not consider voting for a Democrat. Indeed, it seemed his most powerful weapon was a Republican: Senator Richard C. Shelby, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation, who, in an interview on CNN on Sunday, denounced Mr. Moore and declared that Alabama “deserves better.”
“I know that there have been a lot of robocalls that have been recorded — I don’t know what’s being used,” Mr. Jones insisted. “The people of the state, they have elected Richard Shelby for four decades,” Mr. Jones said of the senator, who has said he wrote in “a distinguished Republican” rather than vote for Mr. Moore. “They’re going to listen to Richard Shelby.”
The tight race is all the more extraordinary by the standards of Alabama, where no Democrat has won an election for Senate or governor in almost 20 years. A Fox News poll published on Monday found Mr. Jones with a 10-point lead over Mr. Moore, but other recent polling has found Mr. Moore ahead, and private Democratic polling shows a closer race. Mr. Jones also earned an implicit boost, of a sort, from Condoleezza Rice, the Republican former secretary of state and an Alabama native. In a statement issued by her office on Monday afternoon, Ms. Rice called on Alabamians to “reject bigotry, sexism and intolerance” and “insist that our representatives are dignified, decent and respectful of the values we hold dear.”
Still, Republicans and Democrats agree on the basic dynamics of the campaign: If Mr. Jones can turn out young people and African Americans, and peel away a chunk of Republican-leaning whites — particularly women — who recoil from Mr. Moore, then he has a chance to win. Otherwise, the state’s conservative D.N.A. is likely to kick in and rescue Mr. Moore from tribulations of his own making. While Ms. Rice did not mention either candidate by name, and it is unclear how widely her statement will be seen before Election Day, she joined Mr. Shelby in giving a permission slip to wavering Republicans who may be tempted to vote for someone other than a nominee they find intolerable. Some Republicans, echoing Mr. Shelby, have written-in other figures, and a liberal “super PAC,” hoping to starve Mr. Moore of Republican voters who are skeptical of both candidates, has urged write-in votes for Nick Saban, the University of Alabama’s head football coach.
The Republican candidate has not held a campaign event in a week, and has only infrequently appeared in public since a series of women came forward to allege that he had pursued them sexually while they were young teenagers. That Mr. Jones is even in a position to benefit from a make-or-break turnout effort is extraordinary by the standards of Alabama, where no Democrat has won an election for Senate or governor in almost 20 years and the party’s statewide infrastructure has crumbled and all but collapsed. A Fox News poll published on Monday found Mr. Jones with a 10-point lead over Mr. Moore, but other recent surveys have found Mr. Moore ahead, and private Democratic polling shows a closer race than the Fox poll suggested.
Mr. Moore is scheduled to emerge from his relative seclusion on Monday evening, with a rally in Midland City, a town of a few thousand people in the state’s rural southeastern corner. If Mr. Jones manages to run up a significant lead in the state’s urban and suburban areas, Mr. Moore will be counting on stronger turnout from his largely evangelical base in smaller communities. The campaign’s basic mathematics are widely agreed upon: If Mr. Jones can attract the votes of young people and African-Americans, and peel away a chunk of Republican-leaning whites — particularly women — who recoil from Mr. Moore, then he has a chance to win. Otherwise, the state’s conservative D.N.A. is all but certain to kick in and rescue Mr. Moore from tribulations of his own making.
Mr. Moore’s rally appears aimed at driving those voters to the polls. He is scheduled to appear alongside Stephen K. Bannon, the former aide to President Trump, and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas. Both are well known to activists, largely through their prominence in conservative media, though neither has close ties to Alabama. Mr. Moore, who has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, has been a surprisingly rare sight in public as the campaign nears its end. But he re-emerged at a chandelier-adorned, barnlike building here Monday night in his first public appearance since last Tuesday. The event in Dale County was safe political ground for Mr. Moore, who won 66 percent of the county’s vote in his last statewide general election.
Should Mr. Moore prevail on Tuesday, it will probably be the backing of a different out-of-state supporter — Mr. Trump himself — that was most influential in the last days of the race. While Mr. Trump has not visited Alabama, he has tweeted repeatedly in support of Mr. Moore and recorded an automated phone message that was going out to Republican voters. At a rally that featured three conservative firebrands — Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House adviser; David Clarke, the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wis.; and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas — Mr. Moore’s supporters urged voters to show up on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump provided Mr. Moore with a crucial seal of approval among conservatives at a moment of crisis for his campaign, effectively offering reassurance to Republicans who were uneasy about Mr. Moore’s scandals that it was acceptable to vote for him. At a rally last Friday just over the border in Florida, Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Moore as critical to enacting a “ ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda” in the Senate. “This comes down simply to who is going to work the hardest,” Mr. Bannon said at the rally, which, at varying points, included the theme music to “Mission Impossible” and boos at the mention of Mr. Shelby’s name.
But Mr. Moore, for his part, has plainly struggled to deliver such a pointed closing message, and the most visible public remarks from Mr. Moore and his campaign have been focused in the main on denying allegations of sexual misconduct. Rural and reliably Republican pockets of east Alabama, like Dale County, could prove to be Mr. Moore’s political salvation. Along a stretch of U.S. Route 431 between Phenix City and Dothan on Monday, signs promoting Mr. Moore were common. Advertisements for Mr. Jones, whose signs fill yards in places like Birmingham and Gadsden, were rare.
The charges against Mr. Moore broke into the headlines again on Monday morning, when one of the women whom he is said to have dated as a teenager, Debbie Wesson Gibson, rebuked him in an interview with NBC News. “He is unfit for public service, at the Senate level, in this nation,” Ms. Wesson Gibson said of Mr. Moore, describing him as a “creeper.” Mr. Jones’s strategy does not depend on carrying rural counties that hug Georgia and Florida. Instead, he is hoping to run up significant leads in Alabama’s urban and suburban areas, drawing on traditional Democratic voters as well as Republicans spooked by the allegations against Mr. Moore or a controversial record that predates the Senate campaign.
Mr. Moore has continued to maintain that he did not date teenagers when he was in his 30s, and has denied sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl. Speaking briefly at an event space attached to a vintage car showroom in Birmingham, flanked by the basketball star Charles Barkley, Mr. Jones cast the vote as a choice that would define Alabama’s identity.
“It is time that we put our decency, our state, before political party,” Mr. Jones said. Mr. Barkley was more blunt: “At some point, we’ve got to stop looking like idiots to the nation.”
Although Mr. Jones is running against the tides of recent political history in Alabama, Mr. Moore is a deeply divisive figure in the state, where he was, in effect, twice removed as chief justice of the State Supreme Court.
He has a base of supporters whose fervor is the envy of Democrats, as well as plenty of Republicans who have hoped to vanquish him over the years. But should Mr. Moore prevail on Tuesday, he will likely have Mr. Trump, in part, to thank. The president did not visit Alabama after Mr. Moore won the Republican nomination in September, but he repeatedly took to Twitter in support of Mr. Moore and recorded an automated phone message that went out to Republican voters.
Mr. Trump provided Mr. Moore with a crucial seal of approval at a moment of crisis for his campaign, effectively offering reassurance to Republicans who were uneasy about Mr. Moore’s scandals that it was acceptable to vote for him. At a rally last Friday just over the border in Florida, Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Moore as critical to enacting a “‘Make America Great Again’ agenda” in the Senate.
But Mr. Moore’s campaign has been unable to move past the allegations that made the race a close one, and the candidate himself has not made much of a public effort to deliver a pointed closing message.
On Monday morning, Mr. Jones ridiculed Mr. Moore for effectively going underground at the most intense moment in the race. He mockingly alluded to reports that Mr. Moore attended the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.On Monday morning, Mr. Jones ridiculed Mr. Moore for effectively going underground at the most intense moment in the race. He mockingly alluded to reports that Mr. Moore attended the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.
“Here I am once again, surrounded by this gaggle, which I’ve come to love and enjoy, while Roy Moore was not even in the state of Alabama over this weekend,” Mr. Jones said, adding: “When is the last time you’ve heard of a candidate for statewide office leave the state?”“Here I am once again, surrounded by this gaggle, which I’ve come to love and enjoy, while Roy Moore was not even in the state of Alabama over this weekend,” Mr. Jones said, adding: “When is the last time you’ve heard of a candidate for statewide office leave the state?”