Roy Moore says he will run for Senate again in 2020

The two-time Alabama chief justice’s 2017 bid was sunk by a combination of allegations of sexual misconduct toward underage girls and his longstanding record of extreme comments. Sen. Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in bright-red Alabama by a margin of roughly 22,000 votes, with Jones capturing 50% of the vote to Moore’s 48.3% after Moore defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Luther Strange and Rep. Mo Brooks in the primary. Strange had been appointed senator after Jeff Sessions resigned to become attorney general.

A number of women came forward during the campaign to claim that Moore had sexually assaulted them. Two of the accusers were underage at the time of the alleged incidents.

During his announcement in Montgomery, Ala., Moore said that the results of the 2017 election were “fraudulent” because of disinformation campaign Project Birmingham, which he compared to Russian election interference. And Moore compared himself to now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“Never before in the history of our state has there been such an outcry of opposition to running in a Senate race,” he said.

While President Trump supported Moore in the general election in 2017, Republicans did what they could to keep Moore out of the race this time around. In late May 2019, Trump’s son Don Jr. tweeted: “You are literally the only candidate who could lose a GOP seat in pro-Trump, pro-USA ALABAMA… If you actually care about #MAGA more than your own ego, it’s time to ride off into the sunset, Judge.”

Trump tweeted, “Republicans cannot allow themselves to again lose the Senate seat in the Great State of Alabama. This time it will be for Six Years, not just Two. I have NOTHING against Roy Moore, and unlike many other Republican leaders, wanted him to win. But he didn’t, and probably won’t.”

Kevin McLaughlin, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in February that “the NRSC’s official stance is ABRM: anyone but Roy Moore.”

“The only thing Doug Jones and I agree on is that his only prayer for electoral success in 2020 is a rematch with Roy Moore,” McLaughlin said.

Moore also attacked the National Republican Senatorial Committee, claiming, “Never before has the NRSC become involved in a race when there is no race yet … The NRSC is planning a smear campaign.”

“Why is there such a fear, such an anger, such an opposition to someone running?” Moore said. “Is it because I’m a conservative? … Is it because I believe in God and morality?”

A number of Republicans have already lined up to compete in the upcoming primary to take on Jones as he runs for his first full term, including Rep. Bradley Byrne, state Rep. Arnold Mooney, and former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is considered likely to run as well and former Sen. Jeff Sessions is rumored to be leaving the door open to running again as well.

Aside from his failed run for the Senate, Moore was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court twice in 2003 and 2016 and has two failed bids for governor under his belt too.

During his previous attempt at the Senate, Leigh Corfman claimed that in 1979, when she was just 14 years old, the then-32-year-old Moore had two sexual encounters with her while he served as a district attorney in Alabama. Beverly Young Nelson, a Trump supporter, said that when she was 16 years old, Moore attempted to rape her in a car. Rumors of other decades-old inappropriate behavior towards underage women emerged soon after.

Moore also had a long history of controversial comments that many consider bigoted and constitutionally illiterate, including expressing anti-Muslim animus.

Moore wrote in December 2006 that newly elected then-Rep. Keith Ellison should not be allowed to join the House of Representatives because of his Muslim faith, saying “Islamic law is simply incompatible with our law.” Moore also compared Muslim holy book the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf.

In defending Moore’s position, spokesman Ted Crockett claimed in 2017 that to take office in the U.S. one must swear on a Christian Bible, and he seemed stunned when CNN host Jake Tapper pointed out that is not true.

In 2017, Moore made the unsubstantiated claim that “there are some communities under Sharia law right now in our country” but was unable to specify any, saying that he’d been told that “there’s Sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there — I don’t know.” When pressed, he simply said, “If they are, they are; if they’re not, they’re not.”

Moore seemed to gloss over the horrors of slavery when he said in 2017 that America “was great at a time when families were united, even though we had slavery, they cared for one another.” Moore said that during the time of slavery “people were strong in the families — our families were strong, our country had a direction, and we corrected many of the problems.”

Claims the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were at least partly God’s judgment on America drew criticism in 2017. Moore quoted a passage on sin from the Book of Isaiah about a “high wall whose collapse will come suddenly” and suggested: “Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?”

He pointed to same-sex marriage in 2017 as a reason the U.S. has become, as resident Ronald Reagan once believed of the Soviet Union, “the focus of evil in the modern world.” “You could say that about America,” he said to a reporter, because “we promote a lot of bad things” including same-sex marriage. When the reporter suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moore might have similar thoughts on that issue, Moore responded, “Well, maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.”

And Moore has a long history of promoting so-called birtherism, the debunked conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. He he pushed the false as recently as December 2016, saying of Obama it’s his “personal belief is that he wasn’t” born in the United States.