US Democrat wins seat in Alabama in blow to Trump

Democrat Doug Jones won a bitter fight for a US Senate seat in deeply conservative Alabama on Tuesday, dealing a political blow to President Donald Trump in a race marked by sexual misconduct accusations against Republican candidate Roy Moore, Reuters reports.

The stunning upset by Jones makes him the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and will trim the Republicans’ already narrow Senate majority to 51-49, endangering Trump’s agenda and opening the door for Democrats to possibly retake the chamber in next year’s congressional elections.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, Jones had a 1.5 percentage-point lead over Moore. The Republican refused to immediately concede, saying votes were still coming in and that state law would allow a recount if the margin was within half a percent.

The ugly campaign drew national attention and split the Republican Party over accusations from several women that Moore pursued them when they were teens and he was in his 30s.

Moore, 70, a Christian conservative who was removed from the state Supreme Court in Alabama twice for ignoring federal law, denied the allegations and said he did not know any of the women who made them. Reuters has not independently verified the allegations.

Trump endorsed Moore even as other party leaders in Washington walked away from him, but Jones, 63, a former federal prosecutor, portrayed the campaign as a referendum on decency and promised the state’s voters he would not embarrass them in Washington.

“I have always believed that the people of Alabama have more in common than divides us,” Jones told cheering supporters at his Birmingham victory party, where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” had earlier blasted from the speakers.