The much-watched race for U.S. Senate in Alabama just got a bit less interesting but also a bit safer for Republican chances of victory.
Republican Secretary of State John Merrill dropped out of the fiercely contested primary. Merrill announced on Sunday that he is withdrawing because his “path to victory” largely disappeared once Jeff Sessions, former senator and U.S. attorney general, entered the race. His assessment of how Sessions affected his chances is almost surely correct. Merrill’s familiarity with voters and his fundraising potential trailed four other candidates who have stratospheric statewide name identification: Sessions, congressman and former gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Merrill’s exit lets national Republicans breathe a little easier because it reduces the chances for the controversial Moore to qualify for a two-man Republican primary runoff. Moore lost in the 2017 special election to Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, whom the primary winner will face in next November’s general election. In a multi-candidate first-round primary, Moore has both a relatively high “floor” of voting percentage, below which he will not fall. But he also has also a relatively low “ceiling” above which he will not rise. This means that the more conventional candidates there are in the race splitting the non-Moore vote, the more likely it is that Moore reaches a runoff.
Once two candidates reach a runoff, just about anything could happen. As most analysts rightly believe that Jones’s thin chances for reelection in the conservative state rise substantially if Moore is again the GOP nominee, anything that keeps Moore from the runoff also helps chances for an eventual Republican win.
Nonetheless, Merrill’s withdrawal is unfortunate in another sense. Merrill is deservedly a rising star in Alabama politics. He is an indefatigable and tremendously engaging campaigner, and he has done an excellent job as Alabama’s secretary of state. He has been a conservative reformer across the board, while efficiently running his office with fewer employees than his predecessor.
Conservatives appreciate that he has competently implemented strict but fair voter-ID laws. Moderates should be pleased with his successful efforts to spearhead a less bureaucratic, more transparent process for non-violent felons to regain voting rights after serving their prison sentences. As part of doing so, he convened an advisory commission of traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative groups, along with local election officials, for effective, unanimous compromise. (Disclosure: I also served on that commission, which met four times for a few hours each.)
Merrill’s departure makes the race less interesting because, as an energetic underdog, his best chance to make the runoff (before Sessions entered the race) was to find a fresh, innovative way to differentiate himself from the others. Moore owns the social-conservative hard-liners, Tuberville occupies the folksy-populist lane in the race (with all its attendant blather), and the otherwise impressive Byrne is playing the role of Capitol Hill denizen, fawningly desperate to win the contest for being the biggest Trump suck-up.
Alas, Merrill had so far run a race full of the same predictable blather about being a “Trump conservative” who would help “build the wall,” “stand up to socialists,” and do a better job defunding “the Swamp.” Still, the hope was that as a reform-minded fellow and a rather nimble politician, Merrill would inject some issue or idea into the campaign discourse that would be new, different, and worthwhile.
Other races for higher office surely await Merrill. National observers, though, can now watch a race without worrying that an outsider like Merrill might ruin their pre-chosen plotlines involving the weird Trump-Sessions relationship and the alleged ephebophile Moore.
