Words by Roman White
Controversial Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, in an attempt to delay the swearing-in, is now suing to stop the certification of his opponent Doug Jones, who won the Alabama special election earlier this month. Jones defeated Roy Moore by about 20 thousand votes in an outpouring of support from African-Americans in Alabama pushed Jones over the threshold.
The deep red state of Alabama elected its first democratic senator since Richard Shelby in 1992. The election was highly publicized, because of Roy Moore’s controversial statements and actions in the past. In the past, Moore has called Native Americans ‘reds’ and Asians as ‘yellows,’ and even suggested that 9/11 was blowback for the nation losing faith in God.
The night of the election after Jones was declared the winner, Moore refused to concede and wanted to wait for every last vote to be cast before moving forward. Even now, Moore is still funding his campaign in an attempt to investigate the results of the election.
More than anything, Judge Moore’s campaign was hurt the most by allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault of teenaged women that were posed against him during the campaign. Soon after Roy Moore defeated the Trump endorsed Republican Primary Candidate, Luther Strange, women of Alabama who were mostly republican revealed their history with Moore. The allegations stemmed from decades ago, but as a 30-year-old man, Moore is accused to have pursued women as young as 14-years-old.
Roy Moore denied all the allegations and claimed that it was a plot by the liberal media to discredit him in this election. President Trump, who previously faced sexual misconduct allegations of his own during his campaign, endorsed Moore over Doug Jones saying that we didn’t need a ‘liberal democrat’ in office. For a while, Trump was silent on publicly endorsing Moore and the Republican National Committee pulled funding from his campaign in light of the allegations.
However, as the campaign came down to the wire, Trump made his controversial endorsement of an alleged sexual predator public and the RNC went back to funding Moore’s campaign. The democrats have now gained another seat in the senate narrowing the slim majority that Republicans have. Many have viewed this election as a prequel to what’s to come in the 2018 mid-term elections with the majority in the senate up for grabs.
