Dec. 10, 2017 — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, visited Senate candidate Doug Jones’ campaign headquarters in downtown Birmingham Sunday afternoon to deliver a rousing stump speech. Booker, who was joined by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama, gave a speech highlighting the importance of political struggle and called the Alabama Senate race “one of the most consequential elections in our nation in my lifetime.” Read more.
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John F. Kennedy faced questions about his Roman Catholic religion in the 1960s, when he ran for president and won. Religion’s role in elections grew with the rise of politically outspoken religious figures such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But in Alabama’s special U.S. Senate election this year, religion is featured front and center — due in large part to the presence of Republican candidate Roy Moore, who gained fame years ago as the “Ten Commandments Judge” and proclaims his views today on issues linked to religious values, such as same-sex marriage, abortion rights and prayer in public schools. A Google search turns up dozens of articles mentioning Moore’s name along with the word Bible. His campaign rallies are mostly in churches. Moore was removed from his first term as chief justice of Alabama because he refused to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that he had installed in the state Judicial Building. After being re-elected to the post, he was kicked out again when he ordered county clerks to disregard a federal court ruling allowing same-sex marriages. Both acts were in keeping with his fundamentalist Christian beliefs. Read more.
Doug Jones called for a rejection of divisiveness and a change in the “face of Alabama” during a Saturday night get-out-the-vote rally, featuring a performance by local soul band St. Paul and the Broken Bones. The concert was the fourth get-out-the-vote event of the day for Jones, the Democrat widely seen as the underdog in the special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Read more.
Alabama’s two U.S Senate candidates and independent groups working on their behalf have raised more than $20 million that they are using to bombard voters with broadcast and internet ads, mail, and phone calls as the Dec. 12 special election approaches. The candidates’ final pre-election financial reports, filed with the Federal Election Commission on Nov. 22, show Democrat Doug Jones has raised $11,707,585 this year, with $10,182,025 coming in since Oct. 1, a few days after the Republican runoff. Republican Roy Moore reported a total of $5,260,974, with $1,767,693 of that collected during the same period. The FEC has not finished processing the detailed lists showing people, PACs and committees and the amounts they gave to Moore and Jones. In addition to the money contributed to the candidates, outside groups and political action committees reported spending about $5.7 million in support or opposition of Moore and Jones since Moore won the GOP nomination Sept. 26. Much of that money flooded in during the final few weeks of the campaign. Some PACs supporting each of the candidates have found legal loopholes that allow them to avoid naming contributors until after the election. The majority of the money spent by independent groups came from Highway 31, a super PAC working to elect Jones. Read more.
The Center for Public Integrity has collected and released financial disclosure reports from 6,933 state legislatures nationwide, including 140 from Alabama, as part of an investigative report on lawmakers’ conflicts of interest. Read more.
Roy Moore’s campaign announced Wednesday morning that it would consider legal action against television stations continuing to air what it describes as a “patently false” advertisement from the pro-Doug Jones Highway 31 Super PAC. The 30-second ad in question focuses on rumors, as reported in a Nov. 13 New Yorker article, that Moore had been banned from the Gadsden Mall for soliciting sex from teenage girls. Moore has denied these accusations, as well as multiple other allegations of sexual contact with underage women. Stories of the ban have been corroborated by some former Gadsden Mall employees and dismissed by others. Former mall manager Barnes Boyle told WBRC that, “to my knowledge, he was not banned from the mall.” Read more.
