Alabama shows candidates do matter

In case you don’t know by now (and we wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to follow this race) a Democrat won in the South.

Former prosecutor Doug Jones will be the next Senator to represent Alabama, defeating embattled former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy S. Moore in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. It’s the first time in nearly three decades that a Democrat has won an Alabama Senate seat.

Moore looked to have the seat locked up and then allegations of sexual abuse and child molestation surfaced, sending his campaign into damage-control mode. Moore vehemently denied the accusations.

Some in the GOP asked for Moore to bow out of the election, while others decided to not back the candidate.

Despite all of the negatives going for Moore, the election was still a close one — Jones garnered 49.9 percent of the vote, while Moore finished with 48.4 percent. A little more than a mere 20,000 votes separated the two men.

The outcome does narrow the GOP’S majority in the Senate to 51-49 after Jones officially takes office in three weeks, making it that much tougher for Republicans to get anything done. It would be nice to say definitively that the outcome was a result of voters saying there is a limit to what they will put up with from a person’s past, but we can’t.

Because for all we know this could have been the result of Democratic voters pushing back at President Trump. Or Republican voters staying away because of the troubles with Moore.

It does, though, send a clear message to both parties that you can’t just phone it in — having a viable candidate matters.

A better candidate easily wins the seat in Alabama, silencing all of the doom and gloom talk swirling around the GOP following the election.