Alabama Voters To Decide Whether Accused Child Molester Becomes Their Senator

RadioOnFire.com - It is special election day in Alabama. Voters will decide whether they’re ready to send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in decades ― or whether they’ll stick with the GOP, even though the party’s nominee has been accused of child molestation.


For many in the state, the special election has become a way to project a message to the rest of the nation on what Alabama is. And Democrats are hoping an unexpected win will reinvigorate their base and set the stage for the 2018 midterm elections.


Supporters of Democrat Doug Jones want to shed the stereotype of Alabama as a stagnant backwater. Jones is best known for his work as a U.S. attorney in the 1990s, prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members for blowing up a black church in 1963. Sending him to the Senate, they say, would be a positive step forward.


“We just don’t look good in the news. You know what I’m saying? It looks like Hicksville,” Sy Belyeu, 48, told HuffPost. She’s an African-American Birmingham voter who is backing Jones. “There’s a lot of racism, a lot of homophobia. We don’t want to be characterized like that any longer.”

On the other side are the backers of Republican Roy Moore, who has long been known nationally for his conservative religious beliefs. As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he tried to stop the state from following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing marriage equality.


But during this race, Moore’s past interactions with teenage girls dominated the news. In November, The Washington Post published an article about four women who accused Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One of them said she was 14 when he sexually assaulted her.


While many in Alabama ― including plenty of Republicans ― have been disgusted by the allegations, plenty of his supporters have stood by him. Some suspect the accusations are part of a plot by the liberal establishment to take down their man.


“I do not believe the allegations. It’s George Soros,” said Edna Bogue, 72, of Henagar, Alabama, referring to the billionaire Democratic donor.


“Haven’t we always been bad, like cousins marrying cousins? That’s not true, but people say what they want to say. Always have judged us,” Moore voter Ava Lyles, 71, told The Washington Post.


Moore backers have played up this us vs. them battle as much as possible. In one recent ad for Moore, the narrator says:



The same Washington insiders who don’t like President Trump are trying to stop our campaign. They just don’t like conservatives like us. They call us warmongers for wanting to rebuild the military. Racists for securing our borders. Bigots for recognizing the sanctity of marriage. And they call us foolish for believing in God. They’re afraid I’m going to take our Alabama values to Washington.

Source HuffPost