Democrat Doug Jones Wins the Alabama Special Election
In a major upset, Democrat Doug Jones won the Alabama Senate special election on Tuesday to fill the seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The last time Alabama sent a Democrat to the Senate was in 1992.
The Associated Press called the race for Jones just before 10:30 p.m. eastern.
Alabama is a deeply conservative state. But the race unexpectedly became competitive after Republican Roy Moore became embroiled in allegations of past sexual misconduct involving teenage girls. The result was a stunning victory for the Democratic Party, which found itself locked out of power in Washington after the 2016 presidential election.
“Tonight is a night for rejoicing," Jones said at his victory party Tuesday evening to a cheering crowd. Referencing a famous Martin Luther King quote, Jones said: “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. Tonight, you helped bend that moral arc a little closer to justice."
The outcome of the election has immediate and potentially far-reaching consequences that stand to benefit the Democratic Party.
Flipping a Senate seat narrows the already razor-thin Republican majority in the chamber, and will make it harder for Republicans to pass any significant legislation. It might even jeopardize the Republican tax overhaul effort currently underway in Congress. Democrats face an uphill battle to win back the Senate in 2018, but winning a seat in the Alabama race will make their fight that much easier. Jones will hold the seat until 2020.
The outcome of the election deals a blow to President Trump, who had endorsed Moore, and Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, who campaigned on Moore’s behalf. Trump congratulated Jones on Tuesday evening, tweeting that “a win is a win.” The president added that “Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time.”
Jones is a former U.S. attorney known for prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan for the bombing of a black Baptist church in Birmingham in the 1960s, an attack that left four girls dead. Despite campaigning in solidly Republican territory, Jones has run as a pro-choice, pro-immigrant-rights Democrat.
Moore is a former Alabama Chief Justice who gained notoriety for defying federal court orders to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments, and to uphold the legality of same-sex marriage. He faces allegations of sexual assault from multiple women, including women who say they were teenagers when he made advances toward them. Moore has denied the accusations.
The race fundamentally changed in November when The Washington Post reported allegations from a woman named Leigh Corfman who said Moore molested her when she was 14-years-old and Moore was 32-years-old. Since then, more women have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, including groping and assault.
Moore has denied the allegations and called them “ritual defamation.” But his standing in the polls fell dramatically after the news surfaced. By Tuesday morning, the Republican candidate had re-gained an edge over Jones, but pundits and pollsters warned that it was impossible to predict who would win.
After sexual misconduct allegations against Moore first emerged, the Republican National Committee initially cut ties and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he should “step aside.” The distancing act didn’t last long. By early December, the RNC had restored its financial backing for Moore, after Trump endorsed him. McConnell later said that it’s up to the voters of Alabama to “make the call” on whether Moore should be elected to the Senate.
The Democratic Party, for its part, will be sure to keep reminding voters of the ties between the GOP establishment, the president, and Moore.
In a statement celebrating the victory, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Chris Van Hollen said the election result showed that voters “soundly rejected the new Republican Party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump and their toxic agenda.”