Decision day for Alabama Republicans

Strange, Moore battling over spot for Senate runoff

WASHINGTON — Alabama voters streamed to the polls Tuesday to choose the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in an election that President Donald Trump has predicted will be viewed as a referendum on his ability to influence GOP voters.

In pre-election polls it was not looking good for the president, whose favored candidate, appointed Sen. Luther Strange, was trailing former state Chief Justice Roy Moore, a candidate far more in the Trump mold than Strange himself.

While Trump tried to encourage voters to side with Strange by casting the election as a referendum on his presidency, voters seem to be responding to something more elemental, the pre-election polls suggested.

“People like Donald Trump, and people like Roy Moore, and they don’t feel they have to choose between the two,” said Republican pollster Brent Buchanan, whose poll Monday found Moore with a double-digit lead.

“They are bold and brash, and people prefer that over polished politicians right now. And they know where those guys stand,” he said.

Moore proved his boldness in his election eve rally.

To counter Strange’s claim that he was soft on the Second Amendment, Moore brandished a revolver onstage, generating a roar from the crowd. On Tuesday, he cantered to the polls on his horse.

The winner of Tuesday’s election faces a December runoff against Democrat Doug Jones.

The Alabama contest highlighted competing dynamics within the Republican party. Strange, who was appointed to the seat earlier this year after then-Sen. Jeff Sessions became attorney general, has had support from Senate Majority Sen. Luther Strange meets diner owner Wayne Salem after voting Tuesday in Birmingham. Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his allies, as well as Trump. Trump and McConnell have a rocky relationship, and it appeared likely that Trump would blame McConnell if Strange lost the race.

“As you know Mitch is not, polling-wise, the most popular guy in the country,” Trump said Monday on the “Rick and Bubba” radio show. He took part in a 15-minute interview intended to demonstrate that Strange would not be beholden to McConnell despite the millions being poured into the race by groups allied with the majority leader.

“They like to label him Mitch’s best friend in the Senate, and he hardly even knows him. He’ll be fighting Mitch,” Trump said.

Trump campaigned for Moore in Huntsville, Ala.. on Friday night. Vice President Mike Pence added to the administration’s lobbying efforts with an appearance Monday.

But on Moore’s side were several Trump supporters, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and the president’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

Bannon appeared with Moore at the Monday evening rally, savaging McConnell and by extension the candidate favored by Trump.

“Mitch McConnell and this permanent political class is the most corrupt and incompetent group of individuals in this country. They think you're a pack of morons. They think you're nothing but rubes. They have no interest at all in what you have to say, what you have to think or what you want to do,” Bannon said.

The last days of the campaign betrayed how destructive the primary race had become. On Monday, in dueling Fox News interviews, Strange and Moore went at each other.

Strange said that Moore’s election would be “catastrophic” for Republicans because of the possibility Democrats might be able to beat the former chief justice as a result of the controversies in his past. Moore’s record includes being stripped of his court seat twice — once for setting up a monument to the Ten Commandments on state land and a second time for refusing to adhere to court decisions allowing gay marriage.

“What has he actually done for the conservative cause? I couldn’t point to anything actually getting stuff done,” Strange said on Fox. Trump, he said, knows that “I can work with him to get it done.”

Moore, in his interview, said Strange “has done nothing but tell mistruths, lies … and he’s so far not told the truth about hardly anything.”

Moore said that he supports Trump and would continue to do so if elected.

ERIC SCHULTZ/AP