Senate candidate accused of sexual contact with girl, 14

WASHINGTON — A month before Alabama’s special election, Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore abruptly faced allegations Thursday of sexual misconduct with minors decades ago — and an immediate backlash from party leaders who demanded he quit the race if the accusations prove true.

The instant fallout followed a Washington Post report in which an Alabama woman said that Moore, then a 32-year-old assistant district attorney, had sexual contact with her when she was 14. Three other women interviewed by the Post said Moore, now 70, also approached them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.

The Moore campaign dismissed the report as “the very definition of fake news and intentional defamation.”

“Judge Roy Moore has endured the most outlandish attacks on any candidate in the modern political arena, but this story in today’s Washington Post alleging sexual impropriety takes the cake,” the campaign said, noting that Moore has been married to the same woman for 33 years and has four children and five grandchildren.

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice, has made his name in Republican politics through his public devotion to hardline Christian conservative positions. He was twice removed from his 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.

Senior Republicans swiftly called for Moore to step aside from the Senate race if the allegations are shown to be true. And the man he defeated in the primary, current Sen. Luther Strange, left open the possibility he may re-enter the campaign.

Moore’s name cannot be removed from the ballot before the Dec. 12 special election even if he withdraws from the race, according to John Bennett, a spokesman for the Alabama secretary of state. A write-in campaign remains possible, Bennett added.

Strange wouldn’t immediately say whether he’d re-enter the race.

“Well, that’s getting the cart ahead of the horse. But I will have something to say about that. Let me do some more research,” he told the AP.

The Alabama special election is to fill the vacancy created when Trump tapped former Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as the U.S. attorney general. Gov. Robert Bentley appointed Strange in the interim.

Reaction after the Post story was published online was swift and severe.

“The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling,” said Colorado Sen. Chairman Cory Gardner, who leads the Senate GOP campaign arm. “If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell added, “If these allegations are true, he must step aside.”

The intensity of the reaction may partly reflect lingering bad feelings from the primary contest between Strange and Moore, held in late September, that pitted much of the Republican establishment — including President Donald Trump — behind Strange and the GOP’s more conservative flank — including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon — behind Strange.

Neither Bannon nor the White House had an immediate comment.