Trump turns on party after loss
UNITED STATES: The loss of what should have been a safe Republican Senate seat in Alabama laid bare the depth of division within President Donald Trump’s party as voters in the conservative south dealt him his most serious political setback yet.
Doug Jones, a lawyer and newcomer to politics, was the first Democrat to win an Alabama Senate race in 25 years, cutting the Republicans’ majority in the chamber to a single vote.
The shock result set Republicans against each other, with Trump attacking his party for not backing its candidate. ‘‘I wish we would’ve gotten the seat,’’ he said. ‘‘A lot of Republicans feel differently, they’re very happy with the way it turned out. As the leader of the party, I would have liked to have had the seat.’’
Jones, 63, was lifted to victory by a high African-american turnout in a state that Trump won by 28 percentage points last year. He also benefited from affluent whites and young voters abandoning his Republican rival, Roy Moore, whose campaign was upended by allegations he had molested teenage girls in the 1970s.
Ed Rollins, a senior adviser to a protrump campaign group, said the Republicans urgently had to reconcile their feuding establishment and populist wings. ‘‘Everyone is going to start panicking,’’ he predicted.
Allies of Steve Bannon, the nationalist former Trump campaign chief who had backed Moore, blamed the loss on the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, many of whom had effectively excommunicated Moore.
‘‘The Republican establishment got exactly what it wanted,’’ said Corey Stewart, a prominent Virginia politician. ‘‘It wanted to defeat a pro-trump candidate like Judge Moore.’’
The anti-trump faction of the party savoured the moment. Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona who donated US$100 to Jones, tweeted: ‘‘Decency wins.’’
Trump claimed on Twitter to have predicted that Moore, a former judge who had campaigned as a devout evangelical Christian, would lose.
‘‘I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!’’ he wrote.
However, exit polls suggested that as many Alabama voters disapproved of Trump as approved of him; a sobering finding for the president in what is supposed to be his heartland.
Jones, speaking to a crowd of ecstatic supporters on election night, thanked Alabama for refusing to take ‘‘the wrong fork’’ at a political and moral crossroads.
‘‘This entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign has been about the rule of law.’’
The Democrats have now won each of the three statewide elections contested this year, lifting their hopes of seizing control of the House of Representatives – and possibly the Senate – in the midterm elections in November next year.
Moore’s lead in the polls had collapsed after he was accused of molesting a 14-year-old schoolgirl in 1979 when he was 32. Scenting blood, Jones’s supporters poured US$10 million into his campaign in October and November – five times as much as Moore raised.
Trump chose to gamble, risking the aura of political savvy he acquired after his own shock election win.
Without consulting his advisers he went all in for Moore, holding a rally barely 40km from the Alabama state border on Saturday and urging his 40 million Twitter followers to back the former judge.
Maintaining the Republican majority in the Senate had been, it seemed, Trump’s priority. ‘‘Roy Moore will always vote with us,’’ he tweeted on the eve of the election.
Ultimately, though, his endorsement could not overcome the distaste many in his party felt for Moore’s campaign: more than 20,000 voters declined to back anybody on the ballot and wrote in another name instead.
That amounted to about 1.7 per cent of the electorate. Jones won by 1.5 per cent.
– The Times