Key Republican targets Moore

Senior senator says Alabama can ‘do better’ in election

Richard Shelby, the senior senator from Alabama, has said the state can “do better” than electing fellow Republican Roy Moore to the United States Senate, making clear that a write-in candidate was far preferable to a man accused of sexual misconduct.

“I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore. I didn’t vote for Roy Moore. But I wrote in a distinguished Republican name. And I think a lot of people could do that,” Shelby told CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, ahead of tomorrow’s special election.

“The state of Alabama deserves better,” he said.

“There’s a lot of smoke,” Shelby said of Moore and his accusers. “Got to be some fire somewhere.”

Moore faces Democrat Doug Jones in the special election to replace Jeff Sessions, now the US Attorney General.

The accusations against Moore have left many GOP voters and leaders in a quandary. Voters face the decision of whether to vote for Moore, accused of sexual misconduct with teenagers decades ago when he was a county prosecutor in his 30s, or sending Jones to Washington, which would narrow the GOP’s already precarious majority in the Senate. One of the woman who has made accusations against Moore said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14.

Moore has denied the misconduct allegations and said they were a result of “dirty politics”.

Moore’s campaign yesterday appealed to President Donald Trump’s supporters, saying a vote for Moore would be a vote for Trump’s agenda.

Opinion polls show a tight race between Moore, a 70-year-old conservative Christian and former state judge, and Jones, a 63-year-old former US attorney.

Dean Young, chief political strategist for Moore, cast Jones as a liberal who would vote against Trump’s priorities such as building a wall on the US-Mexico border and cutting taxes.

“If the people of Alabama vote for this liberal Democrat Doug Jones, they’re voting against the President who they put in office at the highest level,” Young told ABC’s This Week. “So it’s very important for Donald Trump. . . . If they can beat him, they can beat his agenda, because Judge Moore stands with Donald Trump and his agenda.”

The effort by the Moore campaign to align itself as closely as possible with Trump raises the stakes for the president in the Alabama race.

Trump has endorsed Moore and praised him on Saturday at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, near the Alabama state line.

The President’s support of Moore came despite efforts by other senior Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to distance themselves from Moore.

Alabama voters went strongly for Trump in last year’s presidential election, favouring him by 62 per cent to 34 per cent over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Washington has been roiled by sexual misconduct scandals, with accusations leading to the resignations last week of three members of Congress.

The growing wave of women reporting abuse or misconduct has brought down powerful men, from movie producer Harvey Weinstein to popular television personality Matt Lauer.

Republican leaders have said that if Moore wins, he could face an immediate investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.