Quinnipiac University’s newest poll focuses on the national affairs but has a key section dedicated to Roy Moore (R. AL):
American voters say 63 - 23 percent, in questions asked Friday through Monday, that Roy Moore should drop out of the U.S. Senate race in Alabama. Republicans are divided, as 38 percent say he should stay in the race and 42 percent say he should drop out. Every other listed group says by wide margins he should get out.
Voters disapprove 43 - 25 percent, with 31 percent undecided, of the way Republican officials have responded to accusations against Moore. Republican voters are divided, as 31 percent approve and 29 percent disapprove, with 40 percent undecided.
All American voters believe 51 - 19 percent the charges against Moore.
"Roy Moore has to go, say American voters," Malloy said. "But the only voters who matter are in Alabama." Trump and the Media
American voters disapprove 58 - 38 percent of the way the media covers Trump, but trust the media more than Trump 54 - 34 percent to tell the truth about important issues.
Voters say 53 - 42 percent that the media focuses too much on negative stories about Trump, but do not believe 57 - 39 percent that the media makes up negative stories about him.
From November 7 - 13, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,577 voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points, including the design effect. For the 937 voters asked about Roy Moore, the margin of error is +/- 3.8 percentage points, including the design effect. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones.
Trump’s approval rating is at an abysmal 58/35. With Republican voters so divided on Moore, it’s no wonder Doug Jones (D. AL) decided to go this route in his newest campaign ads:
Jones has not aggressively attacked Moore about the scandal. In general, Democrats have been sitting back while Republicans say whether they think Moore should stay in the race and whether they believe his accusers.
The Jones ad doesn’t directly address the Moore scandal, but does seem to reference The Washington Post story breaking the news about the first four accusers.
“He’s already been removed from office twice,” one Republican in the ad says. “This time it’s even worse,” says another. “You read the story and it just shakes you,” adds the third.
The second Jones ad, which is also running statewide, features a man who says he is a lifelong Republican but is now going to vote for Jones in the Dec. 12 special election.
“I’m urging all Republicans, if they will, to take a look a Doug. There’s no way we can vote for Roy Moore. There’s no way in the world that we can have that kind of representation on our Senate. We need a guy that can bring unity to this state, as well as the nation. Doug Jones is that,” he says.
Late last month, Mother Jones released a piece profiling Jones’ campaign and how he’s been using his record as a Civil Rights prosecutor to help shape the narrative of his campaign:
“There’s certainly a lot of rural white voters in Alabama who probably would not be taken with voting for a guy who’s got Doug’s record on civil rights,” says John Saxon, a Birmingham lawyer and longtime friend of Jones. “But I think there are people who see this as an opportunity to help change the image of the state.” A Democrat, Saxon says Republicans have approached him to confide that they will be supporting Jones. “They want his face as the face of the state and not Roy Moore’s,” he says.
It wasn’t long after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that the FBI zeroed in on four Klan members as suspects. But the bureau closed the case in 1968 without making any arrests. The state convicted one of the suspects, known as “Dynamite” Bob Chambliss, in 1977, but prosecutors didn’t have the evidence to convict the other three—partly because state and local officials, who were often in cahoots with the Klan, had dedicated their manpower to investigating the absurd theory that members of the black community had set off the bomb to manufacture sympathy for the civil rights movement. A law student at the time, Jones had skipped class to watch the Chambliss trial. By the time he became a US attorney in 1997, two of the remaining suspects were still alive: Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry.
Jones enlisted one of the best prosecutors in the office and set to work. They combed all the files from the first trial and pored through library archives looking for new evidence. The investigation took three years and led to a few big breakthroughs. One was an FBI tape from a hidden recording device under Blanton’s kitchen sink, which had caught the Klansman referring multiple times to making “the bomb.” The FBI had failed to turn the evidence over to state investigators in the 1970s. Jones would play it to great effect at Blanton’s trial. The other was the discovery of crucial witnesses who had not come forward before, including Cherry’s third wife.
“The 16th Street Church bombing case was the coldest of the cold cases,” says Joyce White Vance, a prosecutor who worked under Jones at the time. “Prosecutions like this really don’t happen. And the only reason this case was prosecuted was because of Doug’s singular focus and commitment to making sure that it happened.”
“It was by no means a guarantee that he was going to get a conviction,” says John Carroll, a law professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham. “It was a fairly risky thing that he did, which is try to reopen this cold case and try it because he certainly could have failed.” After the trials—Blanton’s in 2001 and Cherry’s in 2002—Carroll, then the dean of the law school, asked Jones to present the story of the trial to incoming law school classes. “Doug had a great way of talking about the importance of the law and how the law works for good in those sorts of instances,” he says.
Jones hasn’t shied away from discussing the bombing case and civil rights as he introduces himself to Alabama voters. On Monday, his campaign released a TV ad showing Jones speaking directly to the camera about the case. “We’ve come so far since those dark days, but we still have a ways to go,” he says in the ad. “It’s time, Alabama, to stand up for the Constitution, against violence, and for unity. And on December 12, Alabama can lead the way.” His campaign website calls voter suppression “un-American” and cites the 2015 massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, this summer as reminders that “we cannot be complacent with continued threats to equality and justice.”
Let’s seal the deal and defeat this pedophile. Click here to donate and get involved with Jones’ Campaign.