High-stakes Alabama Senate race exposing ugly truths
George F. Will BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — But for the bomb, the four would be in their 60s, probably grandmothers. Three were 14 and one was 11 in 1963 when the blast killed them in the 16th Street Baptist Church, four blocks from the law office of Doug Jones, who then was 9.
He was born in May 1954, 13 days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. He was 16 when he attended, at this city’s Legion Field, the Alabama vs. University of Southern California football game, in which USC’s Sam Cunningham, an African-American all-American, led a 42-21 thumping of the home team, advancing the integration of the region through its cultural pulse, college football. Roll Tide.
As a second-year law student, Jones cut classes to attend the 1977 trial of one of the church bombers, “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss. In 2001 and 2002, as U.S. attorney, Jones successfully prosecuted two other bombers. Was there resentment about this protracted pursuit of justice? No, he says, because after 9/11 intervened, punishing domestic terrorism was not controversial. Today, this son of a steelworker stands between Roy Moore — an Elmer Gantry mixing piety and cupidity: He and his family have done well financially running a foundation — and the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.
Moore campaigns almost entirely on social issues — NFL protests, the transgender menace — and the wild liberalism of Jones, a lawand-order prosecutor and deer and turkey hunter who says he has “a safe full of guns.” Jones’ grandfathers were in mineworkers and steelworkers unions: Birmingham, surrounded by coal and iron ore, was Pittsburgh — a steel city — almost before Pittsburgh was. He hopes economic and health care issues matter more.
Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be grotesque specimens of the vanity about virtue that is curdling politics. Another public benefit from the Moore spectacle is the embarrassment of national Republicans. Their party having made “Access Hollywood” tape’s star the president, they now are horrified Moore might become 1 percent of the Senate.
Absentee ballots are already being cast. Assuming the Republican governor does not shred state law by preventing the election Dec. 12, Republicans’ Senate majority might soon be gone. It has been 21 years since a Democratic Senate candidate won even 40 percent of Alabama’s vote. It has, however, been even longer — back to the George Wallace era — since the state’s identity has been hostage to a politician who assumes Alabamians are eager to live down to hostile caricatures of them.
Jones’ hopes rest with traditional white Democrats (scarce), Republicans capable of chagrin (scarcer) and blacks. They are 27 percent of this state in which “civil rights tourism” is economically important.
This month, Virginia’s African-Americans turned out for Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, a Democrat who, like Jones, invited voters to take a walk on the mild side. Approximately a quarter of Alabamians live in the metropolitan area of Birmingham, which has had a black mayor since 1979.
Next month’s election will occur during many distractions, midway between Thanksgiving and Christmas and, more important, 10 days after Armageddon: the SEC championship game. Perhaps an Alabama victory would make the state hanker for a senator worthy of its football team. If so: Roll Tide.