AL.com, Alabama’s largest local news source, has endorsed Democrat Doug Jones to take the state’s vacant U.S. Senate seat.
In a piece published late Saturday, the editorial board issued a sharp rebuke of the Republican in the race, Roy Moore, as he faces numerous allegations of sexual impropriety with teenage women when he was in his 30s.
“A vote for Roy Moore sends the worst kind of message to Alabamians struggling with of abuse: ‘if you ever do tell your story, Alabama won’t believe you,'” the editorial board wrote. “Or, worse, we’ll believe you but we just won’t care.”
The opinion piece offered three suggestions for voters, who go to the polls on Dec. 12: Stay home, vote for a write-in candidate, or, their preferred option, vote for Jones, who was described as “a moderate Democrat and a strong candidate for all Alabamians.”
AL.com is owned by the Alabama Media Group, which also owns the Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register. All three of those outlets appear on AL.com.
Moore, a longtime judge in Alabama, is facing numerous allegations by women who claim he pursued romantic or sexual relationships with them as teenage girls while he was in his 30’s. The first accusations came out in a Washington Post report earlier this month, and that list has since grown. Moore denies any wrongdoing and has resisted calls by top Republican lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to drop out.
The Washington Post that was the first to report the allegations earlier this month included a claim from a woman who said that when she was 14-year-old in 1979, Moore, then 32 years old, groped her. Moore accusations have followed since the Post report came out.
Moore denies any wrongdoing and has resisted calls by top Republican lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to drop out. Moore has also said that a lawsuit is imminent against the Post. While he has lost endorsements from key Republican lawmakers, Moore still has defenders in Alabama and in Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist.
Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange, the preferred candidate of McConnell and President Trump, in the GOP primary in September.
The general election contest, which aims to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he was picked to be Trump’s attorney general, looks to be turning in Jones’ favor.
Recent polls have shown Moore trailing Jones in the deep red state, and there has been reporting to suggest a surge in fundraising support for the Democrat.
