Jones wins Alabama’s Senate race
Democrat seizes moment to score unexpected win over GOP’s Moore
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Democrat Doug Jones has won the special election to fill a Senate seat in Alabama, according to exit polls and returns — a shocking upset in a solidly Republican state, in which massive turnout among African-American voters helped defeat a candidate enthusiastically backed by President Donad Trump.
With about 98 percent of precincts reporting, Jones was leading by about 10,000 votes, with 49.5 percent of the vote as compared to Republican Roy Moore’s 48.8 percent.
It appeared that write-in candidates played a key role in the race: combined, they got 22,000 votes, more than the gap between the winner and the loser. Republican Richard Shelby, Alabama’s other senator, had appeared to encourage the state’s Republicans to choose that option: Shelby said he wrote the name of an undisclosed “distinguished Republican” rather than vote for Moore.
Trump congratulated Jones in a Twitter message, saying “The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this
seat in a very short period of time.”
Moore, however, refused to concede the race.
Speaking to supporters less than a half hour before midnight, Moore said he thought the race might go to a recount, which state law requires when a race is within 0.5 percentage points.
“When the vote is this close … it’s not over,” Moore said.
Jones’ lead, at that point, however, still exceeded 0.5 percent.
Then, Moore — who had spent much of his campaign railing against the news media — asked that the media visit the Alabama secretary of state and ask how the recount provision might be triggered in this case — that “the press will go up there and talk to them to find out what the situation is.”
“What we’ve got to do is wait on God,” Moore said.
Jones would become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama since 1992. The Senate seat came open when Trump chose Jeff Sessions to become attorney general earlier this year.
Jones’ victory followed a pattern set earlier this year in Virginia’s gubernatorial election: a wave of enthusiasm among the Democratic Party’s traditional base, which was aided by a swing from Republicans to Democrats among well-educated suburban voters.
In all, 10 of Alabama’s 67 counties flipped from red to blue: they had supported Trump in 2016, but now voted for Jones. Among them: vote-rich Madison County, home to Huntsville — a highly educated city with huge defense and aerospace industries.
Jones, 63, is a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham Baptist church, which killed four girls. The bombers were not tried until the 1990s.
He has never held elective office.
In Alabama, the night’s early returns showed Moore ahead, as mainly rural votes came in. But Jones surged ahead after 10 p.m. as large cities like Mobile, Montgomery and Birmingham reported huge increases in turnout and large margins for the Democrat. Overall, news reports indicated that statewide turnout had smashed expectations, roughly doubling what officials had predicted.
At Jones’ election-night party in Birmingham, the crowd buzzed with nervous energy as the victory took shape.
His supporters watched CNN on a big screen, with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” revved up over the loudspeakers, when the race was called for Jones. The crowd erupted.
Supporters clapped, hugged each another and looked at the results on their phone, some in disbelief, some with a sense of validation and triumph.
“I just had a feeling!” one man exclaimed.
Paulette Roby, 67, said she had been worried that Moore would drag the state’s race relations back toward Alabama’s troubled past.
“We’ve got to have somebody that’s going to represent the state of Alabama with good faith,” said Roby, an African-American who said she was active in the civil rights movement. “We can’t go back. Why would we go back?”
Jones’ victory will reshape the calculus of the Senate, where Republicans will see their thin majority shrink from two votes to one.
With Jones’ win, Senate leaders will face pressure from Democrats to seat him before final votes on the GOP tax bill. The Alabama secretary of state’s office said the election result could be certified with the Senate as early as Dec. 27 to 29.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday, before the Alabama polls closed, that Rebublican Sen. Luther Strange — who lost in a primary to Moore — will remain in the Senate through the end of the current session.
While Republicans are still likely to pass a huge tax-reform push before Jones is officially seated, the rest of the GOP’s agenda may now plunge into jeopardy.
The coalition that backed Jones was sketched out in early exit polls. They indicated that black turnout might be slightly higher than the levels in 2012 and 2008, when Barack Obama was on the ballot. African-Americans made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2008, and 29 percent in 2012. In this election, they make up about 3 in 10 Alabama voters so far on Election Day according to preliminary exit polls.