Counties to watch as Alabama votes for U.S. senator
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Associated Press Southeast political correspondent Bill Barrow breaks down the Alabama U.S. Senate race between Democratic candidate Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore on the eve of the special election. (Dec. 11)
AP
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The election to determine Alabama’s next senator has drawn tens of millions of dollars into the state and the world’s attention.
Now the decision is in Alabama voters’ hands, and they have a full 12 hours to head to the polls — from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. CT Tuesday. Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore are on the ballot.
The election brings an end to a campaign that consumed the state for six months and grew more intense after nine women accused Moore of a range of misconduct from pursuing relationships with them as teenagers to unwanted attention to assault. The former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, who was removed from office twice for defying federal orders, has denied all the charges.
The two campaigns, the result of Jeff Sessions leaving his Senate seat after 20 years to become attorney general in the Trump administration, have pursued different strategies. Jones, a former U.S. attorney, needed to build a coalition of base Democratic voters and suburban Republicans, particularly Republican women who in the past have not been enthusiastic about Moore.
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Jones has stressed a platform committed to job creation and health care while soft-pedaling other issues.
Moore has talked more about Donald Trump in the current campaign but otherwise has run a campaign not unlike his previous statewide ones with an emphasis on getting his loyal base of voters to the polls. In his public appearances, he has stressed returning religion to the public sphere and attacked lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights with a particular emphasis in this campaign on transgender individuals.
Moore repeatedly has highlighted Trump’s decision to ban them from the military. Yet the Pentagon confirmed Monday that it will begin accepting transgender troops Jan. 1, complying with a federal court order that overrules Trump’s pledge.
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The race has proven closer than most, and Democrats spent this past weekend in a wide-ranging get-out-the-vote push through the state. The Jones campaign said in email Monday that volunteers knocked on 80,000 doors during the weekend.
Moore made no public appearances between Tuesday and Monday evening — he said Tuesday at a rally in Midland City, Ala., that he took his wife on a trip to West Point, N.Y. — and has relied on surrogates and conservative media to make his case for him.
Taken as a whole, the polls give Moore a narrow lead over Jones though individual polls have shown wide fluctuations. The race likely will come down to these counties:
• Jefferson and Montgomery. In both large, Democratic-leaning counties whose major cities are Birmingham and Montgomery, Jones will have to run up the score to have any chance of winning Tuesday night.
• Mobile and Madison. These counties on the opposite sides of the state — their major cities are Mobile and Huntsville — tend to vote Republican. But when Moore ran for chief justice in 2012, they swung to Bob Vance, the Democratic chief justice nominee.
This year, Moore came in third in Madison in the Aug. 15 GOP primary and narrowly lost the county in the Sept. 26 GOP runoff. Both campaigns will want to pull these counties into their column; Jones may need both to have a shot.
• Houston County and the Wiregrass region. The five southeastern Alabama counties of Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston have long been a Moore stronghold and gave him large winning margins in the Sept. 26 runoff. Houston County, where Dothan is located, is the largest of these counties.
Moore held his final rally Monday night in Dale County’s Midland City and will need strong turnout throughout the region named for its native grasslands.
• Tuscaloosa County. Generally a Republican-leaning county, Tuscaloosa was another Vance county in 2012, and Jones made campaign stops there this year.
• Sumter and Greene counties. While Alabama’s heavily Democratic Black Belt, a region whose moniker refers to the area’s rich black topsoil, isn’t large in population, the counties of Sumter, whose county seat is Livingston, and Greene, whose county seat is Eutaw, saw higher-than-average turnout Aug. 15 and went heavily for Jones. Repeating that performance will help the Democrat.
Follow Brian Lyman on Twitter:Â @lyman_brian
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Brynn Anderson/AP
Roy Moore, the former Alabama Chief Justice, rides in on a horse named ?Sassy? to vote a the Gallant Volunteer Fire Department during the Alabama Senate race.
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, rides in on a horse named “Sassy” to vote a the Gallant Volunteer Fire Department, during the Alabama Senate race, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, in Gallant, Ala.Â
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