5 Thoughts on Roy Moore & the Alabama Senate Race

Okay, I made a pledge that I would only take a NaNoWriMo break if something major happened in the news.  At the time, I assumed that it would be either an obituary or a Senate retirement (I nearly wrote an Orrin Hatch retirement article in preparation for the month just in case, but wasn't quite that Type A).  Anyway, I would NOT have guessed that what would break my sabbatical would be a massive scandal in the Alabama Senate election, and having to weigh in on how much Roy Moore being accused of having sexual misconduct with a girl under the age of 18 would impact his political campaign.  But it's 2017, and the Alabama GOP seems to be digging their feet in in a move that even shocked me, and so here I am taking a novel break to share my thoughts.

Judge Roy Moore (R-AL)

1. The Republican Reaction to this Has Been Abhorrent

I just finished reading the article from the Washington Post, and it's very thorough and well-researched.  Four women went on-the-record as saying that Moore, in his early 30's, dated or attempted to date them when they were teenagers, either under-age or provided alcohol to them when they were under the legal drinking age.  The youngest of these women was 14, and said that Moore groped her.  The article is a very sound piece of journalism, and perhaps the best example I've seen of Republicans simply calling something "Fake News" because it doesn't agree with how they wish the world was, as this is exactly what Roy Moore did.

In fact, while national Republicans came out with varying degrees of "he should drop out" to "if true, he should drop out" (no one has yet asked what they would do if he doesn't drop out, but they should know it's coming), Alabama Republicans were indignant and seemed to brush it off.  The State Auditor compared it to the story of Mary and Joseph in perhaps the most appalling comment of the day, claiming that Moore was similar to Joseph in having a teenage romantic interest.  Others claimed, somehow, that Doug Jones was worse than voting for Moore and Bibb County Chairman Jerry Pow said that even if it was true he'd still vote for Moore.  All-in-all, it shows how truly heinous the Republican Party has gotten-if they are going to stand around for a guy who one of the country's most honored newspapers just called a pedophile (they didn't say that exact wording, but what else do you call a 32-year-old guy they said forcibly groped a 14-year-old?), it's hard to imagine they wouldn't support literally anyone to stop a Democrat from winning public office.  Honestly, I don't want to get into hyperbole, but if alleged pedophile isn't the line in the sand, is there one?  Much has been made about the fact that Harvey Weinstein was kicked out of show business while Donald Trump became president in the face of similar allegations, but perhaps the easy answer is the Democrats won't stand for this and the Republicans well?  That feels glib (and a bit high-and-mighty), but the reactions to Moore here indicate it might be true.

Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)

2. Roy Moore Will Be on the Ballot

All that being said, it's difficult to imagine what the next steps will be in this race.  Moore has appeared defiant in the wake of these allegations, shrugging them off as nothing more than "garbage" and "outlandish," issuing attacks against the Washington Post and Doug Jones, though Jones himself was relatively quiet and only issued an eight-word statement in response to the article ("Roy Moore needs to answer these serious charges", for the curious).  If Moore won't step down, in a similar situation to Todd Akin a few years back (and of course Donald Trump last year), there's nothing that the Republicans can do to get him from appearing on the ballot.

That being said, it seems that Moore, so close to the election, can't be replaced on the ballot anyway.  The ballots have already been sent out, and Secretary of State of Alabama Jim Merrill has stated that the law doesn't allow for Moore to be replaced, as ballots have already been sent out.  Some might point to the New Jersey case where Frank Lautenberg replaced then-Sen. Robert Torricelli on the ballot amidst a Torricelli scandal, but the law wasn't as clear in New Jersey as in Alabama, and it's unlikely a court case would agree to such a replacement and the clock is ticking even if they were to try such a course of action (it's equally unlikely that Moore would stay as quiet about the matter as Torricelli did in 2002).  As a result, Roy Moore is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for the Senate, regardless of the feelings of the actual party.

US Attorney Doug Jones (D-AL)

3. This Doesn't Mean Moore Will Lose...

It has to be said at this point, though, that while the picture is bleak for Moore, it doesn't mean that he's necessarily going to lose.  In another state like Pennsylvania or Ohio this would be the death of his campaign, particularly against a scandal-free, quality candidate like Doug Jones, but Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the union, and Moore's something of an institution in the state, albeit one with a bizarre following that probably couldn't exist anywhere else in the US.  Donald Trump is perhaps the most famous example of people favoring party against overwhelming misbehavior that would presumably disqualify someone from holding public office, but there are others.  Rep. Scott DesJarlais, for example, in 2012, it was revealed was a doctor who had had an affair with one of his patients, and despite being pro-life, pressured the patient to have an abortion; it was also revealed he'd been abusive to his ex-wife.  DesJarlais lashed out at the Democrat in the race (similar to Moore) and accused him of dirty tricks despite these being part of actual court proceedings.  Though his Democratic opponent State Sen. Eric Stewart did considerably better than a Democrat should have done in a district this conservative, it wasn't enough to actually defeat DesJarlais, despite him displaying behavior that should have disqualified him from holding public office (he's still in Congress, for the record).  There are countless examples of politicians winning even when they do something truly egregious, even criminal, that flies in the face of what their voters claim they want.

I'll be honest here-if I were forced, at this point, to predict who wins this race I'd still bet on Moore.  I would love nothing more to be wrong, but the dynamics still favor him, albeit by a smaller margin than this morning.  That could change in the coming weeks as we learn more about the scandal (these things tend to snowball if Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and Harvey Weinstein are any indication), but I feel like this is a DesJarlais or Trump sort of situation-Alabama is SO red, it's hard to imagine that he doesn't retain the advantage in literally any situation, especially after the reactions of local Republicans to the race.

Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL)

4. ...But a Write-In Campaign Might Destroy Him

That being said, I wouldn't write off Doug Jones, and if a Democrat were ever going to win in Alabama, this would be the way it would happen.  Democrats have won in similarly conservative situations before, and the one that most springs to mind is Nick Lampson in 2006.  Lampson, a former member of Congress, ran something of a kamikaze mission against Tom DeLay to protest Texas's mid-decade redistricting.  The Cook PVI for the district was R+15 (Alabama is R+14 for reference), so it was a suicide mission to think he'd actually win, but DeLay became embroiled in scandal, and was legally obligated to stay on the ballot so that Republicans had to run a write-in campaign.  The result was that Lampson's quixotic mission to prove-a-point ended up with him gaining an unlikely return to Congress, as Republicans couldn't convince the voters to cast enough write-in ballots for their new candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs and ignore DeLay's name still on the ballot.

I bring this up mainly because the Republicans could face a similar situation if incumbent Sen. Luther Strange were to try to mount a write-in campaign for the seat.  Strange lost the primary to Moore, but would be a way for more moderate Republican voters in the state to cast a ballot that clears their conscience without actually voting for a Democrat.  Jim Merrill has said the state's sore loser law doesn't apply to write-in candidates, and as a result Strange running could do untold damage to Moore's chances if it catches on at all.  It's very easy to see Doug Jones crossing the threshold of 40, maybe even 45% of the vote at this point-if Luther Strange gets 5-10% of the vote from write-in ballots, that could be enough for Jones to win in a plurality.  Alabama appears to only do runoff elections in the primaries rather than the general (I can't find a definitive answer on this, but Martha Roby won her House seat in 2016 with only 48.8% of the vote, so I suspect it has to be accurate), so Jones winning in a plurality isn't inconceivable.  It's hard to imagine Strange catching on enough to actually be a threat to win outright, but he could stop Moore from going to the Senate if he went this route.

It's also worth noting that the write-in isn't the only thing that could help Jones.  This is a special election (nothing else is on the ballot), and the Republican Party just found out its nominee may be a pedophile.  It's hard to imagine that doesn't depress turnout amongst softer Republican voters who won't be driven out for any other reason than to vote for Moore.  Meanwhile, Democrats just had their most successful general election in five years on Tuesday, and know that their candidate has the best shot a Democrat has had of winning a Senate seat in Alabama since at least 1996, if not 1992.  It will take a lot of levers going right for turnout to make the difference for Jones, but again-if this isn't the scenario where it can happen, what is?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

5. The Senate Majority?

One thing you'll hear a lot of Republican commentators say in the next couple of days imploring the GOP to do the right thing and drop Moore even if it means Jones winning is "this won't give up the majority," and it won't.  Doug Jones is not the deciding vote between the Democrats and the Republicans having the majority, though it would certainly hurt Mitch McConnell's shots at getting tax reform passed by a considerably larger margin (since Moore was a much more likely vote for his bill than Jones would be).

But it's also worth noting that Jones could be VERY important next year if the Democrats have as strong of an election in 2018 as they did in 2017.  That's because the Democrats currently need three seats to win back the majority.  Even in the best of scenarios, where all of the Democratic senators win reelection (a tall order, particularly for Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill, and Joe Manchin) and they pick up the two GOP swing seats (currently held by Jeff Flake and Dean Heller), they still needed one more seat, and there just wasn't an obvious answer as to how they could do this.  Credible candidates in Texas or Tennessee seemed like a pipe dream, as did a Susan Collins party switch.  But if Doug Jones were to win, he won't have to stand for reelection until 2020 (I was noting a lot of Twitter users who assumed it was 2018, but they would be wrong-he gets Sessions' full term and wouldn't be up again until the Democrats had a much friendlier map).  Therefore, Jones could be the Democrats' third seat, providing Chuck Schumer with a tough, but conceivable shot at a majority in 2019 that he didn't have a few hours ago.  National Democrats would be wise to stay out of the race other than funding GOTV efforts (if you're a Democrat who wants to help, my two cents is to give directly to Jones' campaign rather than the DSCC), letting it stay local (making the race national could turn it into a GA-6 situation pretty quickly), but make no mistakes-this has national implications for 2018.