Earlier this week, Democratic Sen. Doug Jones essentially dared Republican Roy Moore, whom he beat in the 2017 Alabama Senate special election, to run again, and he may very well get his wish. On Wednesday, a fundraising email from a group called The Judge Roy Moore Defense Fund went out containing a quote from Moore about Jones proclaiming, “When and if I decide to run he will be the first to know.” Dean Young, a close Moore friend, was also asked by the Washington Examiner's David Drucker if Moore would run again and responded, “I'm not at liberty to say anything about that right now.”
Moore lost the 2017 campaign after multiple women accused him of preying on them when they were teenagers, and the last thing national Republicans want is for him to be their nominee again. You don’t need to take our word for it: The NRSC’s executive director said, “The NRSC’s official stance is ABRM: anyone but Roy Moore.”
Meanwhile, another alum of that 2017 special is reportedly more interested in running that he’s let on publicly. Rep. Mo Brooks said last week that he was “contemplating a Senate race” but that “[i]t would take some kind of seismic event” for him to actually run. However, an unnamed source close to Brooks told Drucker that the congressman is actually “very interested in the race.”
However, Drucker writes that Brooks would only run if he received Donald Trump’s endorsement or at least a pledge that he would remain neutral in the primary. Last time Brooks ran for the senate, he found himself on the wrong end of a Trump endorsement when the White House threw its backing behind appointed Sen. Luther Strange over both Moore and Brooks.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was also in Strange’s corner, and his allies aired ad after ad showing Brooks speaking out against Trump during the 2016 presidential primary. Brooks almost certainly doesn’t want to repeat that experience, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to convince Trump to back him when there are so many clips of him saying things like “I don't think you can trust Donald Trump with anything he says" and calling out Trump for his "callous insults" and "belittling" rhetoric.
It’s possible the White House might agree to stay neutral, but if Brooks actually thinks Trump would actually feel bound to keep his word on anything … well, as they’d put it in Alabama, bless your heart.
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