A new shock poll from Fox News shows Democrat Doug Jones 10 points ahead of Republican Roy Moore as voters head to the polls tomorrow in Alabama to select the state’s next U.S. senator.
Moore, a twice removed state Supreme Court judge, was already a controversial figure in Alabama politics, but has had to answer to accusations that he sexually harassed and assaulted teenage girls, a revelation first published in the Washington Post on November 9.
‘I did not know them,’ Moore said in a new interview with ‘The Voice of Alabama Politics’ on Sunday. ‘I had no encounter with them. I never molested anyone, and for them to say that, I don’t know why thy’re saying it, but it’s not true.’
The GOP hopeful’s denials have allowed him to receive an endorsement from President Donald Trump and campaign help from former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who will appear at a rally for Moore in Midland City, Alabama tonight.
Moore’s campaign has tried to stitch the political futures of Trump and Moore together more tightly, so the state who voted for the president by 28.3 points won’t give a Senate seat to a Democrat for the first time in 31 years.
‘So this is Donald Trump on trial in Alabama,’ said Moore’s chief political strategist Dean Young on Sunday. ‘If the people of Alabama vote for this liberal Democrat Doug Jones, then they’re voting against the president who they put in the office at the highest level.’
A new Fox News poll shows GOP Senate hopeful Roy Moore trailing Democrat Doug Jones by 10 points in the special election, which will take place tomorrow. While the Fox poll is an outlier, Moore’s campaign has been plagued by sexual misconduct accusations for weeks
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s presence alongside Roy Moore in both the primary and the special election suggested to voters that the ex-Judge was really President Trump’s guy, despite the president’s backing of Sen. Luther Strange in the primary
Trump also suggested his agenda was at stake as he slowly moved his support into Moore’s column.
The president had originally teamed up with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in support of Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP Alabama primary, as the state looked to permanently fill the seat once held by Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But Moore destroyed Strange, the appointed seat-filler, in the late September primary, besting the incumbent by about 10 points.
The ex-judge had been aided by Bannon in the primary, whose presence relayed to voters – with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge – that Moore was the true Trump-ian pick.
When the sexual misconduct allegations came out, Bannon’s people forcefully pushed back on reports that suggested the Breitbart head’s support was wavering.
Over at the White House, there was some mixed messaging.
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway at one point said ‘no Senate seat is worth more than a child,’ but then changed her tune less than a week later saying that Moore’s vote would be helpful on the president’s tax reform bill.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (right) visited Alabama to support Democratic Senate hopeful Doug Jones (center), as the Democrats hope that black voters can help offset the large number of Republican, white voters who traditionally vote in the state’s elections
Democratic Senate hopeful Doug Jones (left) was given an assist from popular New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker who came to Alabama this weekend to campaign for Jones, who’s mounted the biggest Senate threat the Republicans have seen in the state in decades
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on November 16 that, ‘The president believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously.’
‘And he thinks that the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be,’ she said.
She used the latter line several more times until Trump, himself, pushed the door open to support Moore as he talked to reporters en route to Mar-a-Lago for his Thanksgiving break.
‘Look he denies it … he totally denies it,’ Trump said, while also whacking the Democrat. ‘We don’t need a liberal person in there. … We don’t need somebody who’s soft on crime like Jones.’
Last Monday, with eight days to go in the race, the president called Moore to offer him his endorsement.
Then, on Friday, Trump appeared in nearby Pensacola, Florida, and encouraged voters in Alabama, living just over the state line, to support Moore.
Trump’s voice is being used in a pro-Moore robo call to get Alabamans to the polls in the support of the candidate tomorrow, on special election day.
Democrats have countered Trump’s support by trotting out some of their own.
Over the weekend, two of the party’s most prominent African-American politicians – Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick – campaigned alongside Jones, hoping to increase black support for the candidate, to offset the state’s white voters who tend to vote Republican in large numbers.
CNN reported Monday that President Obama has recorded a robocall to help Jones too.
And Politico reported that former Vice President Joe Biden has recorded a robocall to boost Jones’ chances as well.
While the Moore-Jones race has dominated the national political conversation, Moore himself stayed largely off the campaign trail in recent days.
He was last seen in public on Tuesday and his campaign announced the Bannon-Gohmert rally for Monday night, on election eve.
On Sunday, he participated in two interviews as he made his final push.
Beyond dismissing the sexual misconduct allegations yet again, on Breitbart’s Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, Moore suggested that politically it was him against the world.
‘I’m fighting both the Republican establishment out of Washington as well as the Democratic Party,’ he said.
‘The Republican establishment actually wants Jones in there because they think they can beat him in two years without a contest,’ he explained. ‘And, of course, the Democrats want Jones in there for their vote.’
A number of Senate Republicans have expressed disgust that Moore didn’t drop out of the race once the allegations became public.
The state’s own Sen. Richard Shelby, who was elected as a Democrat, but is now a Republican, confirmed Sunday that he had cast a write-in vote, not wanting to aid Jones, but not wanting to boost Moore.
But Moore also articulated that a vote for him would make it easier for President Trump’s agenda to get passed.
‘I think we need to move on things while we have the opportunity to do so,’ he noted.