Alabama's special election for Jeff Sessions's old seat is next month, and the candidates are two lawyers: Democrat Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted the two remaining KKK members who committed the infamous 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, and Roy Moore, a man removed from the Alabama Supreme Court not once but twice over failure to follow the law and who now faces allegations of sexual contact with 3 teenage girls in 1979.
Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.
It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.
“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”
Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.
“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.
Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.
Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.
The Post's story on Moore's odious conduct is extremely well-sourced. Moore denies the allegations and literally calls the story "fake news", hoping to fundraise off the outrage factor of being attacked by the evil Democrats, but other Alabama Republicans are shrugging and saying that even if he did it, it shouldn't and doesn't actually matter and that the women are all liars anyway.
“I think it’s just a bunch of bull,” Perry Hooper Jr., President Trump’s Alabama state chairman, told TPM. “Mitch McConnell should know better to make a statement like he made unless he gets all the answers. We’re right in the political zone right now, the election’s December 12th. This is the same campaign issue the left ran against Donald Trump on, they’re doing the same thing against Roy Moore.”
Hooper, who’d backed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) over Moore in the primary, called the allegations “ludicrous” and “gutter politics” unless they could be proven.
“The same thing went on when President Trump ran for office, there was about 15 ladies who ran to the press and said the same thing,” he said.
When asked how the claims could be proven, he suggested the woman take a polygraph.
“Maybe she just needs to take a polygraph test. And the people who are pushing her, they need to take the same test too to see if they’re telling the truth,” he said.
Alabama State Rep. Ed Henry (R), Trump’s other Alabama campaign co-chairman, was even harsher.
“I believe it is very opportunistic and they are just looking for their chance to get on some liberal talk show. I’m sure they’ve probably been offered money by entities that surround the Clintons and that side of the world. We know they will pay to dirty anyone’s name that’s in their way. If you believe for a second that any of these are true then shame on these women for not coming forward in the last 30 years, it’s not like this guy hasn’t been in the limelight for decades. I call B.S. myself. I think it’s all lies and fabrication,” Henry told TPM.
When asked about McConnell’s comments, he erupted.
“Mitch McConnell, and you can quote me on this, is a dumbass, a coward, a liar himself and exactly what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. He would love for Roy Moore not to be in Washington, he’d much rather have a Democrat. Mitch McConnell is scum,” he said, putting the chances at “zero” that the state party would un-endorse Moore.
And he said he’d need photographic evidence to believe the women.
“They got some pictures? That’ll do,” he said. “You can’t sit on something like this for thirty-something years with a man as in the spotlight as Roy Moore and all of a sudden three weeks before a senatorial primary all of a sudden these three or four women are going to talk about something in 1979? I call bull. It’s as fabricated as the day is long.”
Indeed, Donald Trump has been accused by over a dozen women of sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault, and the official position of the White House and the Republican Party is that every single one of the claims is fabricated by lying women.
But at this point, the election is 32 days away and there's no chance Moore will drop out or be removed, so as with Trump, we're about to see if Republican voters believe allegations of sex crimes are a dealbreaker or not. We know racism isn't, and we've got plenty of evidence that sex crimes aren't either, so my prediction that Moore wins easily next month remains.
We're dealing with voters in a state like this.
While dozens of Republicans in Washington are calling on Moore to step aside if the allegations are true, Republicans in Alabama don’t think the story will resonate the same way for voters. Instead, they focused on the timing of the allegations, which come just four weeks before the election.
Paul Reynolds, the Republican National Committeeman from Alabama, told The Hill that something about the timing of the accusation and the Post’s role breaking the story “doesn’t smell right.”
“My gosh, it's The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,” he said.
“This is going to make Roy Moore supporters step up to the plate and give more, work more and pray more."
They believe this is a good thing for Roy Moore.
Chuck Todd (yes, that Chuck Todd) argues that Doug Jones can win this race.
Now you might say that there’s no way (or little way) that a Republican could lose in Alabama, a state Trump won by a whopping 28 points in 2016. But consider:This isn’t to say that it’s a slam dunk that Moore loses after yesterday. But we’re not sure enough people realize how dangerous the political situation is for the GOP.
- Before yesterday, Moore’s lead was just in the high single digits or low double digits, according to the polls. That isn’t a bulletproof lead;
- Moore has been a controversial figure in Alabama for more than a decade;
- Democratic opponent Doug Jones has owned the TV airwaves for an entire month, with ads like this: “I can work with Republicans better than Roy Moore can work with anyone”;
- And the race is a one-on-one special election that takes place two weeks before Christmas, so it will be a low-turnout affair. There is no other race on the ballot.
Yes, Jones isn't facing a 28 point blowout. But if loses by 5 points instead of 12, he still loses. That's where I see things going. The situation can change and I hope that I'm wrong and Jones wins.
I don't see that happening unless there's a major collapse of Moore's support and that collapse hasn't come yet.
We'll see.
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