On Tuesday, Alabama held its GOP Senate runoff for the special election to fill the remainder of Jeff Sessions’ term, and it was a decisive win for Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. With 66 percent of the vote reporting at press time, Moore led appointed Sen. Luther Strange, who had the support of Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, by a wide 56-44 margin. Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney, in a Dec. 12 general election. Until then, Strange gets to sulk around the Senate in defeat.
If money were all that mattered, things shouldn’t have wound up this way. Strange and his allies had a massive spending advantage over Moore, who enjoyed little outside help. According to the firm Advertising Analytics LLC, Strange and his allies—chief among them the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC close to McConnell—booked $4.7 million in TV time during the six week long runoff campaign, while Moore spent only $1 million.
However, Moore entered the race with a solid base of support among Alabama's many social conservative voters. The notorious Moore was permanently suspended from the state’s high court last year for defying federal court orders regarding same-sex marriage, which only made him a martyr to his followers. Amazingly, it wasn’t even the first time he’d gotten booted from the bench, though. Moore was also kicked off the court after he refused to comply with a federal judge's order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the grounds of the state Supreme Court, an episode that made earned him national attention—and the adulation of a lot of ardent fans.
Turnout was low in the Senate runoff, but Moore could count on his devoted base to show up. Strange, by contrast, needed more casual GOP voters to cast ballots, and not nearly enough of them did. Strange also entered the race with some liabilities no amount of money could shake off, namely the shady circumstances by which he got to the Senate in the first place. Strange was appointed to replace Sessions in February by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who was under an ethical cloud at the time due to an unfolding sex scandal. A few months later, as Bentley was facing near-certain impeachment over allegations he’d abused his powers to conceal an affair with a top staffer, he finally resigned as part of a plea deal.
But while Bentley was still in office, Strange—who at the time was still the state’s attorney general—asked the legislature to hold off its impeachment proceedings until he could complete his own investigation. However, after Trump nominated Sessions to be U.S. attorney general and it became clear that Bentley would get to hand-pick the next senator, Strange absurdly began to argue he that he’d never actually said he was investigating the disgraced governor.
It was all an attempt, of course, to try to pretend that there was no conflict of interest inherent in Bentley giving a plum appointment to the very man tasked with investigating his misdeeds, and few Alabama Republicans bought the charade. Even Strange ultimately admitted he was full of it: Once he was safely (or so he thought) in D.C., he belatedly acknowledged that his office had been investigating Bentley all along. The stench of corruption, however, never faded, and inspired a number of disgusted Republicans to jump into the primary, Moore among them.
Moore and his allies, including the white supremacist site Breitbart under the aegis of Steve Bannon, also hammered Strange's ties to McConnell, who has spent all year becoming ever more unpopular with the GOP base. Strange countered by playing up his support from Trump to the hilt, but Moore also argued he would advance Trump's agenda. Trump didn't exactly help Strange when he appeared at a rally for him on Friday and outright said he "might have made a mistake" backing Strange. Trump also told the crowd that both Republicans were "good men," and that he'd stump for Moore if he won the runoff. It was a bizarre speech that appeared to undermine Strange’s “all Trump, all the time” campaign as much as it did to help him.
Moore still needs to get past Jones in December before he can make it to the Senate, but he has plenty of advantages. Trump carried Alabama 62-34, and Democrats have little power left in the state. But the unhinged Moore may be repugnant enough to scare off some more moderate Republicans: Among so many other things, he suggested this very year that the Sept. 11 attacks were divine punishment on America. And in 2012, when he won his ill-fated final term on the state Supreme Court, he only did so by a shockingly narrow 52-48 margin, even though Republicans otherwise cleaned up in Alabama that year.
Still, Moore has a lot of room for error here, and his base will likely show up for him once again in December, while enough of Strange’s supporters will likely decide their hatred of Democrats outweighs their feelings about Moore. Moore may give Democrats their best chance at a win in Alabama in a long time, but Jones will need a few miracles to actually win here.