In the end, electing an alleged child molester was a bridge too far, even for a deeply red state like Alabama. With a winning margin of around just 1.5 per cent, Doug Jones became the state’s first Democratic Senator in a quarter-century, defeating the controversial and polarizing Republican candidate Judge Roy Moore to win last night’s special election for the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions’ appointment as US Attorney General.

The electoral earthquake will probably be seen as a watermark of what voters in a highly conservative state might be willing to tolerate, but also as a rejection of President Donald Trump. The result – close as it was – will also undoubtedly raise more questions about whether the power of the populist wave of Trumpism might now be waning.

As perhaps a desperate postscript to his tawdry race, Moore himself refused to concede defeat, raising the notion of a recount, and quoting scripture, saying “God is always in control.” Under Alabama state law, depending on the margin of victory, a candidate can request a recount if they pay for it themselves. It remains to be seen whether Moore will go down that road. It’s certainly unlikely that Congressional Republicans would welcome such a move.

And while Democrats celebrated, there were likely at least some Republicans breathing a sigh of relief that they will not have to decide whether or not to embrace Moore in the US Senate, or engage with a politician who had openly argued that Muslims should not be able to hold elected office (and if you watch only one video clip from last night, watch that one…)

After the President had gone all in for Moore in recent days, some establishment Republicans were moving to distance themselves from the candidate, even if the weight of the RNC came back in behind him after previously cutting ties. And certainly an interesting factor last night was the increased number of “write-in” votes, which roughly equated to Jones’ margin and may have been in part inspired by Alabama’s other Senator, Republican Richard Shelby, who publicly said he would write-in an anonymous Republican rather than vote for Moore. The state “deserved better,” Shelby told CNN.

When Jones takes his oath of office in January, the balance in the Senate will be 51-49 in favour of the Republicans, who will now undoubtedly try to advance their controversial tax plan while they still control this seat, occupied temporarily by appointee Luther Strange.

A significant key to Jones’ victory was turnout among African-American voters, who showed up in tremendous numbers despite voter-registration problems, perhaps dispelling the notion that such a demographic would not respond in an election where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. But Doug Jones, of course, is widely known as a civil rights champion, having successfully prosecuted members of the KKK for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, in which four black girls were killed.

In a rousing, emotional victory speech – which mentioned Moore by name just once and Trump not at all – Jones invoked Martin Luther King Jr, saying the moral arc which bends towards justice “had bent through the heart of Alabama.” The result will possibly be seen by some as an optimistic sign of the emergence of a “new South” that may be on the way to shaking off a past dogged by racism and intolerance. Jones told his supporters the state “had been at crossroads in the past and unfortunately we have usually taken the wrong fork, but tonight, you took the right road.”

And he had a message for his future colleagues in the Senate: “Don’t wait on me – we want you to find common ground and get something done… Go ahead and fund that CHIP program before I get there,” referring to the children’s health insurance system that is currently under threat.

Last night was also seen in part as a victory for Moore’s accusers and in broader terms the “Me Too” movement.

While the allegations by the Washington Post and others apparently rallied Moore’s base, and seemed to indicate the state’s Republicans were closing ranks – even if they were holding their noses at the same time – it also clearly served to galvanize opposition to him, particularly among women voters who might have been previously undecided.

With poll results towards the end all over the place, and seemingly attempting to run out the clock, Moore all but disappeared in the final days of a campaign in which he had appealed to traditional and evangelical voters by attacking everyone from the liberal media to establishment Republicans, describing his crusade as “Everything the Washington elite hate..” After last night’s result, some of his supporters remained as convinced than ever that the allegations against their candidate had been fabricated.

 In terms of political trends, Tuesday’s result compounds the recent off-year election tsunami in Virginia as a rolling repudiation of President Trump – who had won the state last year with 62 per cent of the vote but whose approval rating in Alabama is now less than 50 per cent.

Last night will be seen as a rebuke to the White House, but perhaps a bigger loser is right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, who pushed Moore’s candidacy down the throats of Republican voters and encouraged Trump to endorse Moore after the President had previously backed his primary opponent Luther Strange.

So with some significant Republican infighting now in prospect, you could almost imagine GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell standing over the President’s shoulder as he composed this tweet:

Such an uncharacteristically measured response by the President (and of course the Republicans won’t get to re-contest this particular seat for six years) stood in contrast to his tweet earlier in the day, in which he took aim at Sen Kirsten Gillibrand after she said he should resign because of the allegations of sexual misconduct against him. The exchange prompted USA Today to ask in an editorial if Trump’s lows would “ever hit rock bottom”, saying: “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.”

Jones’ campaign adviser Joe Trippi – who masterminded Howard Dean’s insurgent Presidential run in 2004 – told the Washington Post in an election-eve interview that their strategy for victory depended on “multiple moving parts.” The Post wrote:

You’d think it would be hard for Moore to win given the sexual allegations against him, not to mention his bigotry and lawlessness. But in reality, rising polarization, “negative partisanship” and the inclination of Republican voters to disbelieve media reporting about GOP candidates — all in a state that is deep, deep red to begin with — all mean that a Jones win can probably only happen if a miraculous confluence of factors breaks his way.

Miracle or not, Moore for his part may have believed that all he had to do was show up high in the saddle.

Although Alabama was, of course, a very local contest, with very specific local issues and personalities, and it’s always unwise to extrapolate from such unique circumstances, Tuesday’s result will certainly give Democrats optimism looking forward to next November’s mid-term elections where they could target seats in states like Nevada and Arizona, and possibly Ted Cruz’s seat in Texas.

But there’s a long way to go until then. And regardless of last night’s outcome, Alabama will continue to face some tough challenges. Just yesterday, for example, a visiting UN official said that the state was enduring “some of the worst conditions of poverty in the developed world.”

That’s not something that’s going to change overnight, no matter who’s representing the people affected by it.


Also published on Medium.