Accused of molesting teens ... but will Trump’s cowboy pal win poll race anyway?
VOTERS in Alabama were last night deciding whether a former judge accused of molesting teenage girls will be elected to the US Senate.
Roy Moore, an evangelical Christian, has polarised fellow conservatives and incensed Democrats who accuse him of being an anti-Semitic, Islamophobic bigot.
His campaign became particularly toxic when a string of women accused him of assaulting or sexually coercing them in the 1970s, when they were in their teens and he was a prosecutor twice their age.
Leigh Corfman claims Mr Moore, now 70, touched her sexually when she was 14. Another accuser alleged he locked her in his car, tried to pull her shirt off and pushed her head towards his lap – when she was 16.
In total, nine women accused Mr Moore of sexual misconduct. One was 28 at the time, the others teenagers – including Beverly Nelson who made a tearful statement accusing Mr Moore last month.
The election turned into a high-stakes gamble for the White House after Donald Trump endorsed Mr Moore. But while a defeat would damage the President’s credibility, Republican leaders fear a Moore victory would engulf their party in a new populist revolution.
Although Alabama is a Republican stronghold, Mr Moore’s lead in the polls collapsed after the sex abuse claims.
Voting was due to end at 1am this morning, UK time. Last-minute polls yesterday predicted wildly different outcomes as politicians forecasted the race would be decided by the willingness of suburban, white Republicans to turn out.
Mr Moore, former chief justice of the southern state’s Supreme Court, dismissed the sexual misconduct accusations as ‘completely false’, but he conceded he might have tried to date teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
Polls show Alabamans believe the claims by a slim margin. Senior Republicans urged Mr Moore to step down, but he refused, insisting he is a victim of a conspiracy by liberals, the Republican establishment, and media.
Mr Trump tweeted yesterday that the Democrat candidate Doug Jones was ‘pro-abortion, weak on crime, military and illegal immigration, bad for gun owners and veterans and against the wall’. He added: ‘Roy Moore will always vote with us. Vote Roy Moore!’
Mr Moore has borrowed some of
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the ‘It’s President’s difficult to campaign drain the slogans. swamp when you’re he said up to on your Monday. neck in ‘We’re alligators,’ up to the neck in people that don’t want change in Washington DC.’
His wife Kayla insisted her husband is not a bigot, saying: ‘One of our attorneys is a Jew.’
Democrat rival Mr Jones is a DONALD Trump was yesterday accused of making a ‘sexist smear’ against a female senator after saying she came to him ‘begging’ for campaign money and would ‘do anything’ for it.
The president was condemned by Democrats for the sexually suggestive nature of his ‘grotesque’ and ‘bullying’ tweet about Kirsten Gillibrand.
He made his comments after the married mother-of-two called on him to resign over sexual assault allegations.
Yesterday Mr Trump, who has previously donated around $6,000 to the electoral camduct lawyer who helped convict two Ku Klux Klan members who killed four black girls in 1963 in a church bombing. He has strong support among young people and AfricanAmericans in a state which is 27 per cent black. Former president Barack Obama urged Democrats to get out and vote. ‘This one’s serious,’ he said in a recording for the Jones campaign. ‘You can’t sit it out.’ Yesterday Mr Moore – who once pulled out a pistol on stage to show his support for gun rights – rode on horseback to his local polling station in Gallant, Alabama. In 2003 he was ousted as chief justice for refusing to remove a 2.5ton stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments, which he had installed. He was re- elected but lost the job again for refusing to institute the US Supreme Court’s decision to legalise gay marriage. He has dismissed evolution and called Islam a ‘false religion’ and threat to US law. This month he allegedly called Asians and Native Americans ‘yellows’ and ‘reds’.
‘This one’s serious’