Alabama Republican Roy Moore announces another run for U.S. Senate in 2020 after losing amid misconduct allegations

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Republican Roy Moore announces another run for U.S. Senate in 2020 after losing amid misconduct allegations. </s> The Latest: Roy Moore announces another run for US Senate

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Latest on Roy Moore's decision on whether to run for U.S. Senate (all times local):

Alabama Republican Roy Moore has announced he is running for U.S. Senate again in 2020 after failing to win the seat two years ago amid sexual misconduct accusations.

Moore announced his campaign Thursday, seeking an eventual rematch against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. The announcement upends an election viewed by Republicans as a top priority in 2020 and ignores President Donald Trump's warning that he "cannot win."

In 2017, Moore narrowly lost the special election to fill the seat that had belonged to Jeff Sessions. He faced allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers decades ago.

The former Alabama chief justice has a following among evangelical voters after defying federal court orders regarding same-sex marriage and the public display of the Ten Commandments.

Alabama Republican Roy Moore will announce if he is running for U.S. Senate in 2020.

Moore lost the 2017 special election to Democratic Sen. Doug Jones amid allegations of past sexual misconduct with teenagers. Moore denied the allegations.

President Donald Trump last month appeared to discourage Moore from entering the race. Trump tweeted that Moore "cannot win" and said Republicans need to retake the seat in the once reliably red state.

Congressman Bradley Byrne, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville and state legislator Arnold Mooney have already announced GOP primary bids.

A former Alabama chief justice, Moore maintains a following among some evangelical voters because of his stances against same-sex marriage and for the public display of the Ten Commandments. </s> (Reuters) - Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose 2017 U.S. Senate bid was derailed by allegations of decades-old sexual misconduct involving teenage girls, said on Thursday he would run again for the seat next year, defying his party’s leadership.

The prospect of a rematch between Moore – a conservative former judge who cultivated controversy even before the salacious allegations against him – and U.S. Senator Doug Jones – widely considered the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in 2020 – had gotten pushback from Republican Party leaders, including President Donald Trump.

“If Alabama does not elect a Republican to the Senate in 2020, many of the incredible gains that we have made during my Presidency may be lost,” Trump wrote on Twitter last month. “Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating!”

Moore, 72, embraced his status as an outsider on Thursday, criticizing Republicans in Washington for trying to influence the Alabama race. He did not go after Trump, however, saying the president was pushed by party leadership to oppose him.

“Yes, I can win,” Moore said. “Not only can I, they know I can. That’s why there’s such opposition.”

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted that Moore was “going against my father and doing a disservice to all conservatives across the country in the process.”

Democrats need a net gain of three seats in 2020 to win a majority in the 100-seat Senate, a task made easier if Jones can hang onto his seat in a state that Trump won in 2016 by nearly 30 percentage points.

Jones became the first Democratic senator from Alabama in decades when he narrowly won a special election after Moore was accused of pursuing sexual relationships with teenagers when he was in his 30s, including one girl as young as 14. He has denied all the allegations.

That race was to fill the seat held by Jeff Sessions, who became U.S. attorney general. The November 2020 election is for a full six-year term.

Several other Republicans, including former Auburn University head football coach Tommy Tuberville and U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne, have announced they will challenge Jones.

Republican leaders wasted little time making it clear they disfavored Moore’s candidacy.

Moore still enjoys a base of support among evangelical voters. He was twice ousted as the state’s chief judge – once for refusing a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the judicial building and once for barring same-sex marriages despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing them.

In announcing his bid, Moore returned to the fiery rhetoric for which he is known, insisting his actions in both cases were justified and promising to put God at the center of his campaign.

In 2017, before the sexual misconduct allegations came to light, Moore won his party’s nomination over establishment-backed Republican incumbent Luther Strange. A super PAC affiliated with McConnell spent millions of dollars boosting Strange’s candidacy, and Trump appeared at a rally on Strange’s behalf.

Some Republicans abandoned Moore after the accusations became public, and the party’s Senate campaign arm cut ties with his campaign. But Trump endorsed Moore and sought to cast doubt on the veracity of the allegations against him.

Alabama’s other U.S. senator, Republican Richard Shelby, told reporters on Thursday ahead of the news conference that he would not support a Moore candidacy.

A Moore campaign could prove to be a “headache” for Republicans running for office elsewhere, according to Zac McCrary, an Alabama-based Democratic pollster.

“Mitch McConnell and Republicans across the country don’t want to spend the next year and a half answering questions about Roy Moore,” McCrary said. </s> Roy Moore’s announcement Thursday that he would once again run for the U.S. Senate in Alabama sent a shudder through the Republican Party and raised a question: Could the GOP have avoided this scenario by uniting early around a credible consensus candidate?

Moore is a former state Supreme Court chief justice who last appeared on the scene in the winter of 2017, when he was the Republican nominee for the Senate in a special election. His candidacy crashed and burned amid charges of sexual misconduct involving minors from earlier in his career, and Moore’s loss to Doug Jones marked the first time Alabama had sent a Democrat to the Senate in 20 years.

Yet now Moore is back for, well, more. He called the accusations against him “false” and cited the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — which featured allegations of sexual assault against the judge — as an event that will make voters more skeptical of the charges against him.

“If they didn’t see through it then, they saw through it with Kavanaugh,” Moore said. “I’m in the race.”

Moore will be able to count on support from some number of hardcore supporters who view the allegations against him as politically motivated, or made up, or irrelevant, and he is helped by the absence of a clear consensus candidate in the Republican Party. There are two Republicans who have already declared: Rep. Bradley Byrne, from the state’s southwest corner, and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.

But Alabama insiders say neither of those two candidates are formidable enough to easily defeat Moore, especially in a primary in which 50.1 percent or more will be needed to avoid a runoff.

Two other politicians seen as credible — Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth and Rep. Gary Palmer — have declined to run. Ainsworth shut the door definitively two months ago, but Palmer has not.

“I would hope that there would be stronger viable candidates. Gary Palmer would be the preference,” said Hatton Smith, a Republican businessman who has chaired fundraising efforts for mainstream candidates in the past.

However, even Palmer and Ainsworth are likely not strong enough to have cleared the field, other Alabama Republicans said.

When Jones beat Moore in 2017, Smith said it was a case of “good over evil” and said he looked forward to Republicans finding a candidate who could beat Jones in 2020. But Smith told Yahoo News in an interview Thursday that if Moore were again the Republican nominee in 2020, he and many other Republicans he knows would vote for Jones again, as they did in 2017.

“There will be a lot of mobilization of people who are Republicans who will not vote for Moore under any circumstances, and you can count me as leading the opposition,” Smith said.

Because of this, Moore’s entrance into the race is good news for Jones, who is probably the most vulnerable incumbent senator of any in the entire country. Jones’s best hope of being reelected rests on a rematch with Moore, according to one knowledgeable Alabama Republican.

That view is shared by an Alabama Democratic leader, who called the Moore candidacy a “great opportunity” for Democrats.

“Roy Moore doesn’t represent Alabama values, which is why he was rejected by a bipartisan group of Democrats, Republicans and Independents in 2017,” the state House minority leader Anthony Daniels told Yahoo News. “If we want to create opportunity for all Alabamians we need senators like [Doug Jones], not people who will embarrass our state and chase away job creators, like Moore.”

Trump, who had backed Moore the last time he ran for Senate even after the sexual misconduct allegations surfaced, has recently tried to wave Moore off from a run. In late May the president tweeted that “if Alabama does not elect a Republican to the Senate in 2020, many of the incredible gains that we have made during my Presidency may be lost.”

“Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating,” Trump said.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, has been even more scathing. “If you actually care about #MAGA more than your own ego, it’s time to ride off into the sunset, Judge,” Trump Jr. said.

One person close to Trump said it’s unclear whether the president will continue to criticize Moore, but another Alabama Republican insider said that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will advocate for Trump to push Moore out of the race. </s> Firebrand jurist Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican primary for U.S. Senate, defeating Luther Strange - an appointed incumbent backed by President Donald Trump and allies of Sen. Mitch McConnell.

In an upset likely to rock the party establishment, Moore clinched victory Tuesday over Sen. Luther Strange to win the GOP nomination for the Senate seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election.

Moore is the state's former chief justice who was twice removed from his duties for defying federal courts over same-sex marriage and the public display of the Ten Commandments.

Propelled by evangelical voters, Moore consolidated support from a number of anti-establishment forces, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon.

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Copyright 2017 WBRC. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> Former Judge Roy Moore announced Thursday he’ll run for the US Senate seat in Alabama again following his failed bid in 2017 after three women alleged he sexually abused them when they were teenagers decades ago.

In his announcement, Moore wondered why “there’s such a fear” over his candidacy, asking if it’s because of his conservative positions and religious views.

“I think there was so much opposition because they don’t want the truth in Washington,” said Moore of his last race. “I think they want to continue the status quo.”

The Senate Republicans’ official campaign organization views a Moore candidacy as the only thing that can come between them and defeating Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, their best pickup opportunity in the country. Rep. Bradley Byrne, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, and state Rep. Arnold Mooney have already announced their campaigns. Secretary of State John Merrill will soon announce his plans.

In 2017, Moore won the GOP nomination for a special election despite the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, spending millions of dollars against him and for then-Sen. Luther Strange, who had been appointed to fill former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ seat.

“We believe most Alabama Republicans realize that nominating Roy Moore would be gift wrapping this Senate seat for Chuck Schumer,” said SLF communications director Jack Pandol in a statement. “It remains to be seen whether Moore can escape his baggage without his candidacy collapsing under its own weight, regardless of what groups on the outside do.”

During the general election, Moore earned the high-profile support of President Donald Trump and Alabama Republican congressmen. But the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut ties with his campaign following the sexual assault allegations and then-NRSC chairman, Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, pledged to never support Moore again. Moore has denied the allegations and claimed that there was a “political conspiracy” against him.

Moore lost to Jones, a Democrat and former US attorney, by fewer than 2 points in a state that Trump won by 27.

Since then, he has lost the support of Republicans, including Trump’s. On Thursday, the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., said on Twitter, “I can assure everyone that by running, Roy Moore is going against my father and he’s doing a disservice to all conservatives across the country in the process.”

Last month, Trump tweeted that Moore “cannot win” and the consequences of another loss would be “devastating.”

“I have NOTHING against Roy Moore, and unlike many other Republican leaders, wanted him to win,” tweeted Trump. “But he didn’t, and probably won’t.”

In his press conference, Moore said he supports Trump and that the President will support him when he advances to the general election.

Moore has long been a controversial figure in the state. He was twice elected as Alabama chief justice but was removed both times, for installing a giant statue of the Ten Commandments in the state judicial building and for ordering lower court judges to refuse to marry same-sex couples.

“We have every right to recognize God,” Moore said. “That’ll be a main factor in my race.”

Several Alabama Republicans in Congress dismissed Moore’s candidacy. Rep. Mo Brooks has come out in favor of Mooney. Sen. Richard Shelby, Rep. Gary Palmer, and Rep. Mike Rogers have all said Moore will lose.

“I strongly believe after going through the experience in 2017 that we need a better nominee,” Byrne told CNN last month. “We need somebody that can defeat Doug Jones and somebody that we can all feel good about voting for.” </s> To the disdain of national Republicans and against the advice of President Trump, controversial Alabama Judge Roy Moore announced Thursday he will run again for the Senate in 2020, after losing a winnable race for the GOP as allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against teen girls surfaced from decades ago.

Those multiple accusations — which Moore has stridently denied — led to the Christian nationalist candidate losing the December 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones by 1.5 percentage points, just over a year after Trump carried Alabama by 28 points.

But in a news conference in Montgomery, which opened with both prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, the former Alabama chief justice was defiant, blaming “false flag” attacks from Democrats spreading misinformation for his narrow loss.

Instead, he said, the multiple accusations from women that Moore had pursued them romantically as teenagers when he was in his 30s had “little impact” on the outcome and rather that Washington Republicans were too afraid of his staunch conservatism and adherence to the Constitution.

“Yes I will run for the United States Senate in 2020,” Moore said. “Can I win? Yes, I can. Not only can I, they know I can. That’s why there’s such opposition.”

When asked what he would do differently during this campaign, Moore said that he “would like to make more personal contact with people.”

The news from Moore that he is running again was quickly met with heavy pushback by national Republicans, who had long urged him not to run again for fear his candidacy would endanger their chance at flipping Democrats’ most vulnerable Senate seat next year. Moore wasn’t their first choice in 2017 either, as many lined up behind Luther Strange, the Republican who had been appointed to fill the remainder of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ term, but Moore would go on to beat Strange, the former Alabama attorney general, in a runoff by more than 9 points.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, whom Moore specifically blamed during his announcement as plotting a “smear campaign” against him, re-upped the statement that NRSC Chairman Todd Young, R-Ind., issued last month and reiterated that “the people of Alabama rejected Roy Moore not too long ago.”

“I with my Republican colleagues always want to be supportive of the most conservative candidate who can actually win a race, and I don’t see that anything has changed in the state of Alabama since the last election,” Young told The Associated Press in May. “We’ll actively work to make sure that the most conservative, electable Republican is our nominee.”

Trump himself — who had stood behind Moore despite the sexual assault allegations as other groups like the NRSC abandoned him — also echoed similar sentiments last month, tweeting that he holds “NOTHING against Roy Moore, and unlike many other Republican leaders, wanted him to win,” but “Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating….Judges and Supreme Court Justices!”

The Senate Leadership Fund, which is allied with GOP leadership, said in a statement that another nomination of Moore would be an electoral disaster.

“We believe most Alabama Republicans realize that nominating Roy Moore would be gift wrapping this Senate seat for Chuck Schumer,” said SLF communications director Jack Pandol. “It remains to be seen whether Moore can escape his baggage without his candidacy collapsing under its own weight, regardless of what groups on the outside do.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters at the Capitol Thursday, “Well, we’ll be opposing Roy Moore vigorously.”

There will be plenty of other candidates for Alabama voters to choose from, including possibly Sessions, who hasn’t ruled out a comeback bid after being ousted from the Department of Justice. Rep. Bradley Byrne, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill and former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville are among those already seeking the GOP nomination to take on Jones.

The argument Moore intends to make seems to focus on the influence an anti-Moore group called Project Birmingham had on the election. The Washington Post broke the story about some of the group’s controversial tactics, which included “creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook” to help buoy Jones. It was similar to tactics Russians used to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, but this time it was Americans behind such a scheme, bankrolled by an Internet billionaire. Jones has decried the group’s tactics and called for a federal investigation into them.

But even before those details emerged, Moore refused to concede the race and made unfounded allegations of voter fraud that were roundly rejected in court following his defeat.

Moore has long been a divisive figure in Alabama, even before the 2017 race. He had only narrowly won his judicial elections before and had been twice removed from the bench, first for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments he’d had erected in the state judiciary building. Later, he was reelected to the court, but then suspended after he ordered Alabama judges to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

Moore also previously lost two GOP primary races for governor. </s> What they’re saying: President Trump, who backed Moore in his previous run, tweeted last month that "Republicans cannot allow themselves to again lose the Senate seat in the Great State of Alabama," adding that Moore "cannot win."
• In response, Moore told Politico: The president doesn’t control who votes for the United States Senate in Alabama."
• Sen. Richard Shelby, the senior senator from Alabama, also said that he believes a Moore run could hand the election to Jones. In response, Moore tweeted that if "Senator Richard Shelby would have stayed out of the 2017 race, Doug Jones would not be in the Senate now."
• In a response to Moore's announcement, the Mitch McConnell-backed Senate Leadership Fund said on Thursday: "We believe most Alabama Republicans realize that nominating Roy Moore would be gift wrapping this Senate seat for Chuck Schumer."

The big picture: The GOP's majority in the Senate has had major implications over the past two years, as judicial nominations — including two to the Supreme Court — have often been decided by a handful of votes. Now, with an aging SCOTUS and a number of judicial seats remaining vacant, the fate of just one Senate spot holds serious consequences.

What to watch: Moore is entering an already crowded field, with seven other Republicans already registered to run for the primary.

Go deeper: Roy Moore sees uptick in polls ahead of 2020 Senate race </s> Roy Moore, a former State Supreme Court chief justice, defeated Senator Luther Strange on Tuesday in the Republican runoff to fill the United States Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general. Mr. Moore will face the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones, a former United States attorney, in the general election on Dec. 12.

Northern Alabama was anticipated to be a pivotal region, with Mr. Strange and Mr. Moore facing off. The area was a stronghold of Representative Mo Brooks, who came in third in the primary. Mr. Strange targeted Mr. Brooks’s home base of Huntsville, and President Trump campaigned for him there last week.

Over all, the race was expected to hinge on turnout of Mr. Moore’s rural base and Mr. Strange’s supporters around Birmingham and Mobile. To offset his rival’s dedicated backers, Mr. Strange counted on a larger number of voters — beyond those who participated in the primary. Read more »
Roy Moore announces that he will run for U.S. Senate again in Alabama, defying the wishes of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.