Last month, Roy Moore won the Republican primary in the special election for one of Alabama’s seats in the U.S. Senate. The win has plenty of political experts talking, and we break down why.
Who is Roy Moore?
He is the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who professes very conservative views and is controversial within his home state.
Moore is backed by Breitbart News’s chairman (and former presidential adviser) Steve Bannon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump had endorsed Moore’s opponent, Luther Strange, who was appointed by Alabama’s governor to fill Tom Price’s seat when Price was named Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in January.
Moore was removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court twice — once for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state courthouse, later for barring clerks from issuing same-sex marriage certificates following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized them.
What are Roy Moore’s views?
Roy Moore has said that homosexuality should be criminal, that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress, that former President Obama was not born in the United States, that parts of the U.S. live under Sharia law and that the 9/11 attacks were due to gays and abortion.
In an interview with Time magazine this week, Moore said that NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem is illegal (it isn’t) and that judges who voted to legalize same-sex marriage should be removed from the bench.
On Oct. 18, HuffPost reported that in 2005, a group founded by Moore, the Foundation for Moral Law, accepted a $1,000 donation from Willis Cato, a prominent Nazi sympathizer. Moore’s campaign and foundation did not immediately comment.
When is the special election for the Alabama Senate seat?
Roy Moore now faces Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama’s Dec. 12 special election. A Fox News poll released on Oct. 17 showed the two tied in the polls at 42% each. Last year, President Trump won the state by 28 percentage points.
