Fierce party loyalty keeps Republican voters from straying

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Anne Stickney does not have many good things to say about Roy Moore. She saw as mere “posturing” his crusade over the display of the Ten Commandments in various Alabama courthouses. She has no reason to doubt the recent allegations that, as a man in his 30s, Moore harassed and sexually assaulted teenagers. In sum, Stickney has concluded that Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, will not get her vote.

But she won’t be voting for his Democratic opponent in the Dec. 12 Senate election, either.

“Doug Jones has a good reputation for being a good man,” Stickney, 63, said. “But he’s still a Democrat.”

Instead, she plans to write in Lee Busby, a Republican and retired Marine colonel, who is running a last-minute write-in campaign.

The outcome of the Senate race is still anyone’s guess, and a victory for Jones would not be the first unexpected turn. But old habits die hard in Alabama, and veterans of Southern politics find it difficult to imagine that even this election, one of the most unpredictable in the state’s recent memory, would in the end stray far from the old fundamentals.

“I don’t think the Lord Jesus could win as a Democrat in Alabama,” said Brad Chism, who runs a Democratic communications firm in Mississippi that has conducted surveys of female voters in Alabama in recent weeks.

Moore was never widely popular in Alabama, even among Republicans; his zealous fan base has been just enough in some past elections, and in others — his two poor showings in Republican primaries for governor — it has been far short of enough. The aversion to Moore has grown only more pronounced with the outbreak of sexual misconduct allegations, including one that he molested a 14-year-old girl — allegations that Moore denies.

But distaste for Moore, while it may lead people to write in other names or just stay home, is for many still not a good enough reason to vote for a Democrat. And here in Alabama, one of the most inflexibly partisan states in the country, where genuine swing voters are few and politics is approached with the same kind of unshakable team loyalty as college football, this is the central problem with Jones. He has been trailing in recent polls after a spasm of optimism that he could pull off a stunning upset in a state where Democrats have not won a major statewide race since 2006.

Alabama Republicans who are looking for an alternative to Moore are turned off by the Democrats over a constellation of issues. But the obstacle that voters most commonly bring up, from the college town of Tuscaloosa to suburban Birmingham to Moore’s home county in northeast Alabama, is Jones’ stance on abortion.

“The biggest thing for me is that he’s pro-choice,” said Susan Moore (no relation to the candidate), a retired respiratory therapist. She said she admired Jones’ prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan members who helped plan the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. But as for Jones in the Senate, she said, “I think he’s much too liberal for our state.”

Nearly 60 percent of adults in Alabama believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.