On Tuesday, voters in Alabama and Utah will go to the polls in party primaries for two special elections this fall. In Alabama, appointed Sen. Luther Strange is trying to fend off two major GOP primary foes; if no one takes a majority of the vote, there will be a runoff on Sept. 26 between the top two vote-getters. In Utah's 3rd Congressional District, three Republicans are competing to succeed ex-House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz, who resigned earlier this year. It only takes a plurality to win the GOP nomination here.
Below we run down the key details on both races. Polls close at 8 PM ET in Alabama and at 10 PM ET in Utah. We'll be liveblogging the Alabama portion of the evening at Daily Kos Elections and tweeting as well. Election officials in Utah warn that as many as 15,000 ballots may not be counted for another day or two, so we do not recommend staying up late watching that race.
● AL-Sen (R & D): After Donald Trump picked longtime GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions to become his now-beleaguered attorney general, then-Gov. Robert Bentley appointed state Attorney General Luther Strange to Sessions’ seat. Bentley's decision was particularly controversial because Strange's office was investigating Bentley for covering up a sex scandal, and Strange’s decision to take a job from the governor infuriated plenty of people who felt the whole affair looked dirty. Strange made the affair look even sketchier by suggesting that he’d never said his office was actually investigating Bentley (it was)—a charade he kept up until he was in D.C. Bentley ended up resigning in disgrace a few months later under threat of impeachment.
Strange faces two major foes on Tuesday: former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and Rep. Mo Brooks, who represents a district in northern Alabama. Moore has an intense following among Alabama's many social conservatives whose hearts he earned forever when he was kicked off the bench in 2003 for refusing to comply with a federal judge's order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from his court’s grounds.
Moore won back his old post in 2012 but it wasn’t long before he was removed from the bench a second time. Last year, he was permanently suspended from the court after he told state probate judges that they "have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary" to Alabama's laws banning same-sex marriage—which had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brooks, meanwhile, first won his seat in the House in 2010 by defeating party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith in that year’s GOP primary, claiming he was the pure tea party alternative. In Congress, true to form, Brooks has occupied the most extreme turf possible as a member of the nihilistic House Freedom Caucus. A few other Republicans are also running, but none of them have much in the way of resources or name recognition, and they haven’t registered in any polls.
Strange has been a loyal vote for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in turn has wanted to demonstrate he’ll have the backs of the incumbent senators in his caucus. As a result, McConnell's well-funded allied PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has spent heavily attacking both Brooks and Moore, who would be much less reliable allies were either of them to win. (Trump also unexpectedly endorsed Strange during the final week of the race.)
Brooks backed Ted Cruz during last year's presidential primary, and Strange and the SLF have run ad after ad featuring clips of Brooks disparaging Trump, all but making it appear as though he opposed Trump from the left. (One spot even linked him to Nancy Pelosi.) Brooks has spent most of the race mired in third place, according to the polls, and this nonstop barrage from McConnellworld is likely the reason why.
However, SLF recently shifted most of its focus towards Moore, probably because they expect Strange to face him in the runoff and want to soften him up now. For his part, Brooks has tried to tie Strange to McConnell, even arguing that the majority leader deceived Trump into backing Strange. Moore has mostly been playing to his socially conservative base, though he's attacked McConnell as well.
Polls have mostly shown Moore in front with Strange in second and Brooks in third, though a few recent surveys have shown Brooks in striking distance of taking Strange's spot in the second round, a turn of events that would be utterly humiliating to the GOP establishment. Special elections are notoriously difficult to survey, though, and turnout is likely to be very low, which could benefit Moore and his enthusiastic base. Indeed, the New York Times and Politico both report that local observers believe Moore is in fact far ahead, and perhaps even close to taking the majority he'd need to win the GOP nomination without a runoff.
Alabama is one of the reddest states in the nation, and the GOP nominee is likely to win the December general election without much trouble. Still, Democrats hope that the bloody GOP primary will give them a chance, especially if they get to face Moore. The most (and only) prominent Democrat running is former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, a Bill Clinton appointee famous for prosecuting the perpetrators of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, a KKK terrorist attack in 1963 that killed four young girls.
Several Democratic luminaries, including Joe Biden and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, have lent their support to Jones. A number of little-known Democrats are also running, but one just happens to be named Robert Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has no connection to the famous political family or much money, but Democrats fear that voters will pick the name that just happens to be familiar and choose a candidate who won't be strong enough to capitalize on Republican disarray.
● UT-03 (R): This spring, GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz surprised the political world when he announced he would retire from Congress, something young committee chairmen don’t typically do. But in a sign of how checked out he was, Chaffetz accelerated his timetable and simply resigned his seat entirely to take a job with Fox News (of course). Chaffetz infamously delighted in aggressively looking into Hillary Clinton's emails but showed absolutely none of the same zeal in going after Donald Trump, and Democrats were not sorry to see him leave early. That prompted a special election that now features three Republicans who are all hoping to represent this seat, which includes Provo and the southeast corner of Utah.
The frontrunner appears to be Provo Mayor John Curtis, who has decisively outspent his two primary foes. However, ex-state Rep. Chris Herrod surprisingly won the endorsement of the state party convention in June, a sign that the conservative grassroots are on his side. He also has the support of the radical anti-tax Club for Growth, which recently aired ads attacking Herrod's opponents. The third candidate is consultant Tanner Ainge, a first-time candidate. Ainge is the son of Brigham Young University basketball star and current Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, and the candidate’s parents have funded a super PAC to help him. Ainge’s prominent family name doesn’t seem to be boosting him much, though, as the only recent poll gave Curtis a 31-23 lead over Herrod, with Ainge at 15.
The general election will be held Nov. 7 (the same day as elections in many other parts of the country). This area consistently backs Republicans across the board, and Mitt Romney carried the seat 78-19 in 2012. Trump has never been popular in Utah, but he beat conservative independent Evan McMullin 47-23 here, while Clinton took third place with 22 percent of the vote. However, special elections have been anything but predictable in the Trump era. Democrat Kathie Allen, who has no primary opposition, raised a credible amount of money back when Chaffetz looked like he was running for re-election, and she had about $480,000 in the bank at the end of June.