Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sex scandal has GOP scrambling to reply
GOP urges exit in Ala. contest if sex accusations true
Senate candidate urged to quit Alabama race if allegations involving girl who was then 14 prove true.
WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called on Senate candidate Roy Moore to withdraw from a special election in Alabama if allegations prove true that the former judge initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl nearly four decades ago.
“If these allegations are true, he must step aside,” McConnell said in a statement on behalf of all GOP senators.
Moore, 70 and a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has denied the allegations and given no indication that he will exit the Dec. 12 race.
In a written statement, Moore said: “These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and The Washington Post on this campaign.”
The Moore campaign denied the report as “the very definition of fake news and intentional defamation.”
Moore himself issued a fundraising appeal asking for emergency donations in a “spiritual battle.”
“I believe you and I have a duty to stand up and fight back against the forces of evil waging an all-out war on our conservative values,” he wrote. “I will NEVER GIVE UP the fight!”
Other GOP senators weighing in included Jeff Flake of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, David Perdue of Georgia, Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Thune of South Dakota and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Sen. John McCain, RAriz., called on Moore to step aside — and without couching his statement with “if true” language.
“The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying,” McCain said. “He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.”
Moore has made his name in GOP circles through his public devotion to hard-line Christian positions. He was twice removed from his state Supreme Court position, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a 5,200-pound granite Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building, and later for urging state probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage.
Leigh Corfman, now 53, told the Post that Moore, then 32, first approached her as she was sitting with her mother on a bench outside an Alabama courtroom down the hall from his office when he was an assistant district attorney.
After the girl’s mother entered a courtroom for a child custody hearing, Moore got Corfman’s phone number, she said. Days later, he picked her up one night around the corner from where she lived and took her on a 30-minute drive to his home in the woods, where he kissed her and told her she was pretty, Corfman said.
On a second visit, he took off her shirt and pants, stripped to his underwear, touched her over her bra and underpants, and guided her hand to touch his crotch, she said.
She said she asked him to take her home, and he did.
Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by the Post in recent weeks said Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s. None of the other women said that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.
Alabama lists the legal age of consent as 16. The state’s statute of limitations for bringing felony charges involving sexual abuse of a minor in 1979 would have run out three years later. Corfman never filed a police report or a civil lawsuit, the Post said.
The man Moore defeated in the Republican primary, current Sen. Luther Strange, wouldn’t say whether he’d re-enter the race.
The special election is to fill the vacancy created when President Donald Trump tapped Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as the U.S. attorney general. ThenGov. Robert Bentley appointed Strange in the interim.
The state Republican Party has the power to disqualify Moore from the election, though it is too late to remove his name from the ballot, according to the Alabama secretary of state. McConnell and other Republicans will face the challenge of figuring out what candidate would run in Moore’s place — and how to win an election in which it is too late to replace his name on the ballot.
Moore faces the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones.
The intensity of the reaction may partly reflect lingering bad feelings from the primary contest between Strange and Moore, held in late September. Much of the GOP establishment, including McConnell and Trump, supported Strange, while the GOP’s more conservative flank, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, backed Moore.
Neither Bannon nor the White House had an immediate comment. But in Alabama, some Republicans downplayed the allegations.
“Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus,” Alabama state Auditor Jim Ziegler told The Washington Examiner.