Two days before Alabama’s hard-fought U. S. Senate election, the state’s senior Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby, said “the state of Alab…
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Two days before Alabama’s hard-fought U. S. Senate election, the state’s senior Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby, said “the state of Alabama deserves better” than Roy Moore, who has been accused of multiple instances of sexual misconduct, including an assault on a 14-year-old.
Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Shelby told interviewer Jake Tapper: “I think the Republican Party can do better.”
The special election campaign in Alabama has been extraordinarily divisive, not only exposing the deep partisan divergence between backers of Moore and his Democratic challenger, Doug Jones, but spotlighting an intraparty rift among Republicans in what has long been a reliably red state.
Many Republican strategists believe the party will suffer regardless of who wins Tuesday’s election.
Shelby had already stated publicly that he would not vote for Moore and would write in another Republican.
His decision to repeat that on television two days before the election raised the ante, coming as both sides make their final appeals to voters. An advertisement featuring Shelby’s earlier statements has been playing heavily on Alabama TV.
After initial hesitation when the multiple allegations about Moore surfaced, President Trump – himself accused of sexual improprieties by a number of women – has wholeheartedly endorsed him. ““Get out and vote for Roy Moore,” the president told a rally last week in Pensacola, Fla., addressing Alabama voters.
With the campaign in its crucial home stretch, Moore’s campaign has increasingly relied on the support of Trump, who overwhelmingly won the state in the 2016 presidential election. Voting against Moore, the campaign pitch goes, would be a betrayal of the president.
“This is Donald Trump on trial in Alabama,” Moore strategist Dean Young said on ABC’s “This Week.” If voters support Jones, he said, “they’re voting against the president.”
The Washington Post first reported allegations that Moore, as a county prosecutor in his 30s, had repeatedly sexually pursued girls in their teens. Many voters have rallied to his side, pointing out that the behavior in question was decades ago, and that one of the accusers did not initially make clear that she had added to an inscription she says he wrote in her yearbook.
Soon after the allegations were made public, Trump’s daughter Ivanka tweeted that there was a “special place in hell” for child predators. The national GOP withheld support for Moore, but then reversed itself, falling into line with Trump.
Moore has branded the accusers liars and said he did not know any of them.
