{"id":54411,"date":"2017-12-13T05:14:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T05:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=54411"},"modified":"2017-12-13T05:14:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T05:14:54","slug":"once-a-long-shot-democrat-doug-jones-wins-alabama-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/once-a-long-shot-democrat-doug-jones-wins-alabama-senate-race.html","title":{"rendered":"Once a Long Shot, Democrat Doug Jones Wins Alabama Senate Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once a Long Shot, Democrat Doug Jones Wins Alabama Senate Race<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Once a Long Shot, Democrat Doug Jones Wins Alabama Senate Race:- Doug Jones, a Democratic former prosecutor who mounted a seemingly quixotic Senate campaign in the face of Republican dominance here, defeated his scandal-scarred opponent, Roy S. Moore, after a brutal campaign marked by accusations of sexual abuse and child molestation against the Republican, according to The Associated Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

The upset delivered an unimagined victory for Democrats and shaved Republicans\u2019 unstable Senate majority to a single seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Jones\u2019s victory could have significant consequences on the national level, snarling Republicans\u2019 legislative agenda in Washington and opening, for the first time, a realistic but still difficult path for Democrats to capture the Senate next year. It amounted to a stinging snub of President Trump, who broke with much of his party and fully embraced Mr. Moore\u2019s candidacy, seeking to rally support for him in the closing days of the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid thunderous applause from his supporters at a downtown hotel, Mr. Jones held up his victory as a message to Washington from voters fed up with political warfare. For once, he said, Alabama had declined to take \u201cthe wrong fork\u201d at a political crossroads.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have shown the country the way that we can be unified,\u201d Mr. Jones declared, draping his election in the language of reconciliation and consensus. \u201cThis entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign has been about the rule of law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump tweeted his congratulations to Mr. Jones \u201con a hard fought victory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Propelled by a backlash against Mr. Moore, an intensely polarizing former judge who was accused of sexually assaulting young girls, Mr. Jones overcame the state\u2019s daunting demographics and deep cultural conservatism. His campaign targeted African-American voters with a sprawling, muscular turnout operation, and appealed to educated whites to turn their backs on the Republican Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those pleas paid off on Tuesday, as precincts in Birmingham and its suburbs handed Mr. Jones overwhelming margins while he also won convincingly in Huntsville and other urban centers. The abandonment of Mr. Moore by affluent white voters along with strong support from black voters proved decisive, allowing Mr. Jones to transcend Alabama\u2019s rigid racial polarization and assemble a winning coalition. And solidifying Mr. Jones\u2019s victory were the Republican-leaning Alabamians who chose to write in the name of a third candidate rather than back one of the two major party nominees. Over 20,000 voters here cast write-in ballots.<\/span><\/p>\n

To progressive voters here, Mr. Jones\u2019s victory marked a long-awaited rejection of the divisive brand of politics that Alabama has inevitably rewarded even as some of its Southern neighbors were turning to more moderate leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the celebration for Mr. Jones, Sue Bell Cobb, a former chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, said Mr. Jones had overcome a culture of \u201ctoxic partisanship,\u201d reaching out to Republicans and electrifying restive Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNever has there been this level of civic engagement,\u201d said Ms. Cobb, who is planning to run for governor next year. \u201cNever has it happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She was drowned out by a raucous cry from her fellow Democrats, and clasped her hands to her face as she saw on a massive projection screen that Mr. Jones had pulled ahead. Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, a newly inaugurated Democrat standing just feet away, beamed as returns from his city helped put Mr. Jones over the top.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels great,\u201d he said with undisguised elation. \u201cIt sends a message not just to America but to the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The campaign, originally envisioned as a pro forma affair to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, developed in its final months into a referendum on Alabama\u2019s identity, Mr. Trump\u2019s political influence and the willingness of hard-right voters to tolerate a candidate accused of preying on teenage girls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Jones, 63, best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for bombing Birmingham\u2019s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, offered himself chiefly as a figure of conciliation. He vowed to pursue traditional Democratic policy aims, in areas such as education and health care, but also pledged to cross party lines in Washington and partner with Senator Richard C. Shelby, the long-tenured Alabama Republican, to defend the state\u2019s interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Moore did little in the general election to make himself more acceptable to conventional Republicans. To the extent he delivered a campaign message, it was a rudimentary one, showcasing his support for Mr. Trump and highlighting Mr. Jones\u2019s party affiliation. But after facing allegations in early November that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl and pursued relationships with other young teenagers, Mr. Moore became a scarce presence on the campaign trail.<\/span><\/p>\n

On election night, as the results came in from Alabama\u2019s cities and Mr. Moore\u2019s lead evaporated, the mood at the Republican\u2019s election night party in Montgomery darkened. A saxophonist played a slow rendition of Amazing Grace, and the crowd quieted as the results from The New York Times website posted on a projection screen turned toward Mr. Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking the stage over an hour after The Associated Press called the race, Mr. Moore refused to concede and instructed a subdued crowd to \u201cwait on God and let this process play out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGo home and sleep on it,\u201d Mr. Moore told supporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The election is a painful setback for Republicans in Washington, who have already struggled to enact policies of any scale and now face even tougher legislative math. Mr. Moore\u2019s success in the Republican primary here, and the subsequent general-election fiasco, may deter mainstream Republicans from seeking office in 2018 and could prompt entrenched incumbents to consider retirement.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is also a measure of relief for some party leaders that Mr. Moore will not join the chamber, carrying with him a radioactive cloud of scandal. A number of Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, had indicated that Mr. Moore would face an ethics investigation if he were elected, and possibly expulsion from the Senate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Republican activists would most likely have opposed such a measure, setting up a potentially drastic, monthslong clash within the Republican Party, now averted thanks to Mr. Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, that relief comes at a steep price. Before the election in Alabama, Republicans were heavily favored to keep control of the Senate in 2018, when Democrats must defend 25 seats, including 10 in states that Mr. Trump carried in 2016. Just two or three Republican-held seats appear vulnerable, in Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee.<\/span><\/p>\n

But after Mr. Jones is sworn in, Republicans will control only 51 seats, creating a plausible route for Democrats to take over.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the election burst into the national consciousness in early November, with the sex-abuse claims against Mr. Moore, it was an intensifying political migraine for Republican leaders months before then. Mr. Trump\u2019s decision to pluck Mr. Sessions from the Senate in early 2017 touched off a grim comedy of errors for the party, involving two Alabama governors, a Senate appointment widely seen as tainted by corruption, a rescheduled special election and a botched attempt by national Republican donors to crush dissent in the Republican primary.<\/span><\/p>\n

For all their efforts, party leaders were rewarded with Mr. Moore, whom they grudgingly embraced in the early fall \u2014 just in time for a scandal of unmatched luridness to appear.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported in early November that Mr. Moore, while a local prosecutor in his 30s, had made sexual overtures to four teenage girls, one of whom was 14 at the time of their encounter. Other women soon stepped forward to say Mr. Moore had made advances on them too, one of whom charged him with committing sexual assault.<\/span><\/p>\n

National Republican officials abandoned Mr. Moore\u2019s campaign. Yet after it appeared that Mr. Moore remained viable, Mr. Trump offered a Thanksgiving week defense of the candidate and urged Alabamians to oppose Mr. Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s intervention helped stabilize Mr. Moore\u2019s campaign. When the president made the case for the Republican\u2019s candidacy at a Friday rally in Gulf Coast town of Pensacola, Fla., just over the Alabama line, Mr. Jones\u2019s campaign saw their internal polling advantage dissipate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the conclusion of the campaign was largely to Mr. Jones\u2019s benefit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Jones raised $10.2 million in just over a month-and-a-half and third-party groups augmented his candidacy, helping him finance a massive voter-turnout effort after he had dominated the state\u2019s airwaves for weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

He raced across the state with a handful of out-of-state surrogates and one local celebrity, basketball star Charles Barkley, in the race\u2019s last days, focusing his attention on Alabama\u2019s cities, college towns and heavily black communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Moore, instead of facing questions about his alleged sexual abuse, largely vanished from the campaign in the race\u2019s last week. He returned to Alabama for a rally in the rural, southeast corner of the state on Monday with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump\u2019s former chief strategist.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the most memorable comments from the event did not come from Mr. Moore. Rather, they emerged from Mr. Bannon, who mocked MSNBC\u2019s Joe Scarborough, a University of Alabama graduate, for not attending a more prestigious university; Mr. Moore\u2019s wife, Kayla, who angrily denied charges the couple was anti-Semitic by noting \u201cone of our attorneys is a Jew;\u201d and an Army friend of the candidate, who recalled the two of them being uneasy walking into a Vietnam brothel to find \u201cpretty girls\u201d who Mr. Moore found too young.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/12\/12\/us\/politics\/alabama-senate-race-winner.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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