Birmingham, Ala.
On a recent Saturday, Doug Jones addressed a meeting of the Alabama Democrats’ executive committee. The party hasn’t won a major statewide race since 2006 and has been stymied by racial divisions and power struggles. There are more than two-dozen vacancies on the committee, and local leaders attack each other for being directionless.
It was two months from the Democrats’ best shot to win an Alabama Senate seat in 25 years. Jones, their 63-year-old nominee in the race, said it was time to focus and put aside quarrels. He delivered the message to the committee “tactfully” and “selectively,” says state senator Linda Coleman-Madison. “I had to stand up and applaud.”
Jones’s decision to speak about the intraparty quarreling says much about his popularity among Democrats. He leads quietly—“picks his fights,” Coleman-Madison says—and approaches politics constructively. His campaign has centered on topics like job creation and health care. But “the overwhelming issue is having leaders on both sides of the aisle work together, no matter what the substantive issue is,” says Giles Perkins, the former executive director of the Alabama Democrats and one of Jones’s top strategists.
President Clinton appointed Jones U.S. attorney for the northern district of Alabama in 1997. During his four-year tenure, he successfully prosecuted the two remaining Klansmen who hadn’t been tried for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, which killed four African-American girls in 1963.
Jones, who was raised just west of Birmingham, is an appealing candidate for Alabama Democrats—who failed even to field an opponent for Jeff Sessions when he was up for re-election in 2014. Coleman-Madison says Jones “grew up like everybody else, understanding what segregation was all about.” State senator Billy Beasley tells me the nominee is a “person of high integrity and very intelligent.” Rep. Chris England calls him “fair and evenhanded.” Each of these legislators represent different parts of Alabama: Coleman-Madison and England, both African American, represent Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, respectively, while Beasley is a white lawmaker from the rural southeast corner of the state.
The qualities they praise are mostly apolitical. On policy matters, Jones runs against the conventional wisdom for an Alabama Democrat. He’s a strong advocate of Obamacare. He supports raising the minimum wage. His environmental platform leads with Sierra Club religiosity: “I want to be perfectly clear: I believe in science.”
Chris England likes that the party is finally running a more mainstream liberal in a statewide race.
“Honestly, for decades now, we have always approached it from the other perspective: the understanding that this is Alabama, it’s a red state, Republican, it’s generally conservative,” he says. “But I think for the first time in a long time, we’re approaching this election from a different perspective, and we’re asking: Can a Democrat represent the best interests of Alabama?”
What they leave aside is abortion. Jones is a strongly pro-choice candidate. He told NBC’s Chuck Todd he’s “not in favor of anything that is going to infringe on a woman’s right and her freedom to choose” and opposes a proposed ban on abortions after the 20-week mark in a pregnancy. Alabama is among the country’s staunchest pro-life states; according to the Pew Research Center, it ranks behind only Arkansas and Mississippi in the percentage of adults who say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.
“I’ve heard from several people that have said that I just can’t vote for someone who supports a woman’s right to choose,” England notes. “And I think that continues to play out. If that issue wasn’t on the table, this election would be over. People would be going to Doug Jones in droves. But I think people are willing to stomach so much because of that wedge issue.”
The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Jones trailing Republican Roy Moore by 3 points. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which pulled its support of Moore after five women accused him of pursuing them sexually as teenagers, released a poll subsequent to the allegations showing Jones leading Moore by 12 points. A race that should have been a foregone conclusion in red Alabama is suddenly unpredictable.
“Judge Moore has a strong, strong base, and I don’t know,” Beasley tells me, pausing. “My gut says they’ll stay with him. But I think that Doug Jones the last 10 to 14 days has been gaining, his media has been good, and he’s expressed the fact that he has the ability to work across political lines.”
Jones’s campaign released an advertisement on November 14 featuring Republican voters who said they couldn’t cast a ballot for Moore in light of the accusers coming forward. “You read the story and it just shakes you,” one woman says. “Don’t decency and integrity matter anymore?” “Just awful,” says another.
Perkins, the Jones strategist, says the ad doesn’t reflect a wider shift in campaign strategy. “We’re hopeful that Doug Jones’s positive message will continue to resonate, and it’s our intention to stick with that,” he says.
Jones would be the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama since Howell Heflin, who opposed legalized abortion and most gun control measures, won reelection in 1990. A victory would breathe life into a long-dormant party.
Around the perimeter of Birmingham, the state’s largest city, Democratic headquarters are cluttered and quiet. In Anniston, an attorney’s office displays a lone Jones for Senate sign. Miles from Talladega Superspeedway, a large Democratic party space next to an abandoned furniture store lacks urgency but for one sign standing on the windowsill: “VOTE OR DIE, V-DAY, TUESDAY, DEC. 12.”
Chris Deaton is a deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
