Moore Likely to Become Alabama’s Next US SenatorÂ
U.S. Senator Luther Strange will face “Judge” Roy Moore in a runoff election to determine which Republican will face Democrat Doug Jones in the race to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, now the Attorney General. Strange was appointed by the governor to fill the seat until the special election, which will be held in December.Â
“Judge” Moore will likely win the runoff and the election.
Moore is the only judge in history to lose his job as Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, twice. The first time he was removed for refusing to remove a multi-ton stone sculpture of the Ten Commandments. The second time he was suspended for the remainder of his elected term after instructing all state probate judges to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage.
Moore has been leading in the polls among all nine Republican candidates, and took just under 39 percent of the vote Tuesday night. More than 50 percent was required to avoid the runoff.
Alabama has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1996.Â
“The likelihood that Roy Moore, the supremely anti-LGBT former chief justice of Alabama, will be the state’s next U.S. senator is looking greater and greater,” The Advocate’s Trudy Ring noted last week, days before Tuesday’s primary.
But Democrats will have to turn out in greater numbers in December than they did Tuesday if they want to ensure Moore does not represent them in Washington. The New York Times reports over 400,000 voted Republican on Tuesday. Barely more than 150,000 voted Democratic.
Moore has said same-sex marriage “is going to destroy the nation,” and if he didn’t fight it he’s be “guilty of treason.”Â
Those are his more tame moments.
“When two bisexuals or two transgendered marry, how large is that family?,” Moore posited in a 2015 interview. “Can they marry two persons, one of the same sex and one of the opposite sex? Then, you’ve got a family of four or how many?”
Days earlier he announced he “would not be bound” by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling if it found same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage. “This power over marriage which came from God under our organic law is not to be redefined by the United States Supreme Court or any federal court,” he added.
Roy Moore’s views are abhorrent, but as a state Supreme Court judge he has made clear he will not obey the U.S. Constitution. Why would anyone think that if elected to the U.S. Senate, he will honor his mandatory oath to “support and defend the Constitution”?
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