Roy Moore, a conservative lightning rod who cost the Republican Party a Senate seat in deep-red Alabama, is signaling fresh interest in mounting another campaign in 2020, sparking alarm on the Right that Democratic Sen. Doug Jones could be gifted another unlikely victory.
Moore, 72, a former state judge, made the rounds at last Friday’s Alabama Republican Party dinner gala. A few days later, a new political action committee run by Moore’s son, Caleb Moore, issued an email fundraising appeal.
Republican insiders, including conservative allies of President Trump, fret that Moore — derailed by sexual assault allegations in a 2017 special election that should have been an easy layup — might divide the party in the primary and advance to a rematch with Jones. On Wednesday, a Moore confidant pointedly declined to rule out that his buddy might run for Senate next year.
“That’s a good question,” Dean Young, Moore’s close friend and adviser for the past two decades, told the Washington Examiner when asked if the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court was preparing to challenge Jones. “I’m not at liberty to say anything about that right now.”
If Moore runs, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm, would take action to block him from the nomination. Otherwise, the NRSC plans to stay out of the Alabama primary.
[Related: Alabama exploring whether Democratic disinformation cost Roy Moore a Senate seat]
“The NRSC’s official stance is ABRM: anyone but Roy Moore,” said Kevin McLaughlin, the committee’s executive director. “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.”
Jones narrowly defeated Moore nearly 15 months ago, earning the right to finish the remainder of the six-year term Republican Jeff Sessions won in 2014. Sessions had resigned to become Trump’s first attorney general, a post he has since relinquished.
Rep. Bradley Byrne announced his run for Senate last week, becoming the first Republican to throw his hat into the ring against Jones.
Some conservative activists are hunting for a more Trump-friendly Republican, unhappy with Byrne’s ties to the GOP establishment. But like the establishment, many conservatives are desperate to avoid another Moore candidacy. Rep. Mo Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus defeated by Moore in the GOP primary in 2017, could satisfy the concerns. The Huntsville-area congressman is privately exploring another bid, despite public pronouncements to the contrary.
But to avoid the sort of divisive primary that led to his defeat and Moore’s nomination, Brooks would only run if he received Trump’s endorsement or a pledge of neutrality. In the 2017 primary, Trump backed Luther Strange, who as Session’s temporary appointed successor was the incumbent and had the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
[Also read: Alabama is already waving goodbye to its ‘fluke’ Sen. Doug Jones]
“He’s very interested in the race,” a source close to Brooks said. “He’d be the clear frontrunner.” Moore is a committed social conservative with a fiercely loyal following.
But even in Alabama, among the most pro-Trump states in the country, the former judge has struggled with rank-and-file Republicans uneasy with his brand of religiously infused politics. Moore fell short in GOP primaries for statewide office in the past, before finally winning one — the special Senate primary. He then promptly lost to Jones.
The new PAC launched by Moore’s son, a self-described political consultant, is an example of what worries establishment Republicans, and conservatives, about the judge.
The group is called Conservative States of America — and the graphic logo on an email fundraising appeal passed along to the Washington Examiner by a GOP consultant reads “C.S.A.,” the abbreviation used ubiquitously during the Civil War to refer to the Confederate States of America.
Caleb Moore, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, defended the name of the PAC and the logo. Moore’s son said the group is a multi-candidate PAC that is not affiliated with his father, although he would not rule out running independent expenditure advertising on Roy Moore’s behalf should he run for Senate.
“I don’t even think he knows I’m raising money,” Caleb Moore said of his father. Regarding the name and logo of the PAC, he said: “People take things that are actually good and turn them into vices.”
