Spiritual Battle??? Or Pedophile?

‘This is a Spiritual Battle We’re Fighting’

At a rally in the small town of Henagar, embattled Senate candidate Roy Moore faced his supporters with defiance.

By ERIC VELASCO

Roy Moore’s campaign appearance Monday night in northeast Alabama—his first rally since his Senate campaign was blown open by allegations of sexual impropriety and an assault involving teenagers—had the atmosphere of an old-fashioned religious tent revival. A Baptist preacher thanked God for Moore during an invocation, and prayed, “May we win this battle against a lost and dying world.” The head of the county Republican Party called the election “a spiritual battle we’re fighting.” The candidate called for a return to morality and said America can become great again only by acknowledging God. The standing-room audience frequently punctuated Moore’s comments with “amen.”

“Continue to pray,” Rich Hobson, a longtime Moore associate and his campaign chief of staff said at the Henagar Community Center, a small square room that was packed with nearly 200 supporters. “Obviously prayer works. That’s why we’re here.”

Moore’s return Monday to public campaigning found a warm reception in this town of 2,400 in DeKalb County. Rural counties in Alabama like DeKalb are both Moore and Donald Trump country. Moore drew 59 percent of the county’s vote in September’s Republican primary runoff, and Trump garnered nearly 85 percent in the 2016 presidential election. On Monday, representatives from Bikers for Trump, a group of fans who frequented the now-president’s 2016 rallies, received a standing ovation in Henagar when they unfurled a red-white-and-blue banner with their logo.

Since the allegations against Moore surfaced, most polls have him fluctuating in and out of the lead against, or virtually tied with, Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate. But there was no doubt how those gathered in Henagar would vote in the December 12 general election to fill the Senate seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became Trump’s attorney general.

“The common person in this county shows up for him,” said Ken Murphree, a county poll worker and supporter of Moore who attended the rally. “This election is critical for the Trump agenda, plus abortion is a big issue with me. We’ve got to have a Christian like Judge Moore. If not this country will go down the tube.”

Moore, a two-time Alabama chief justice who was removed both times from office for moral stances in defiance of federal judges, has built a political career—and a loyal following of voters—over the past 25 years by battling the political establishment and championing conservative evangelical causes, from opposing abortion and same-sex marriage to promoting the Ten Commandments as the moral foundation for U.S. law. Roughly half of state residents say they are evangelicals and some 60 percent oppose abortion rights.

The loyalty of Moore’s strongest supporters has not been diminished by the recent on-the-record allegations that Moore tried to initiate sex with a 14-year-old and sexually attacked an 18-year-old when he was a single attorney in his 30s. Some Moore supporters view the sudden emergence of accusers as politically motivated—“just a dirty Democrat trick ploy,” as Murphree put it. Others say there’s no way to know for certain of the accusers are telling the truth.

“Even if the allegations are true, as Christians we believe in second chances,” said Pat Hartline, who lives in neighboring Cherokee County and was also in attendance. She said she will vote for Moore because he is a Christian conservative who supports gun rights. “He’s for all the right policies,” she said.

Over the course of a 30-minute speech on Monday, Moore quoted scripture, the U.S. Constitution and a poem by Rudyard Kipling—and denounced the accusations of sexual impropriety and assault as false and hurtful to him and his family.

“I do not know these women,” he said at the rally, “and I have never engaged in sexual misconduct with anyone. This is simply dirty politics.” Moore’s campaign has challenged the accounts of Moore’s main accusers in interviews, on social media and in a new television ad. “I’m going to take off the gloves and tell some truth,” the former boxer and mixed-martial arts competitor said Monday to rousing applause. “I’m a fighter.”

Moore said he is opposed by a Democratic and Republican establishment in the Washington that is spending millions to try to keep him out of the Senate. “There is an established group in Washington that doesn’t want change, Moore said, to a chorus of “amens.” “They’re aware of my past. I’m difficult to manage, which means I follow my own mind.”

National Republicans—with the exception of Trump—have cut ties with Moore, with many would-be GOP Senate colleagues saying he should drop out or considering alternatives to prevent Moore from taking a seat in the Senate. But state Republican officials in Alabama have stood by Moore. Some say they would vote for him even if the allegations that he preyed on teens as an adult are true.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Moore’s opponent, Jones, on Twitter. Last weekend, he tweeted that Jones, a former federal prosecutor who convicted two Klansmen in the notorious civil rights-era 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, is soft on crime and generally opposes the president’s agenda on immigration, gun rights and tax cuts. But while Trump has come close to endorsing Moore even in the wake of his allegations, citing the candidate’s strong denials, the White House says he will not make any campaign appearances for Moore in the two weeks remaining before the election.

But Trump’s recent comments tacitly supporting Moore were enough for Chris Cox, the founder of Bikers for Trump. Three of the group’s members attended Moore’s campaign event Monday, and they are planning their own rallies in support of Moore in Huntsville this weekend and in Birmingham the weekend before the election. Cox, who traveled from his home in Washington D.C., and Shawn Johnson, an Alabama representative from the group, said they had been waiting for the president’s nod before coming out on Moore’s behalf.

“We follow his lead, and he kinda gave us the go-ahead to come in and get behind Judge Moore,” Johnson said after the rally. Johnson said he generally supports Moore, though in the Republican primary he initially backed Luther Strange, who was appointed temporarily to Sessions’ Senate seat in February and whom Trump endorsed.

“We take it very seriously,” Cox said. “We want to be good stewards for President Trump.”

Moore promised the people attending Monday’s rally that he would be a good steward to Trump’s agenda, including enhancing immigration and border controls and unwinding “unfair trade agreements.” He said he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, de-fund Planned Parenthood and enhance military readiness.

“I know how to strengthen military readiness,” said the West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, whose two sons have military connections, “and it’s not by opposing President Trump’s ban on transgender troops.”

Throughout the general election campaign, Jones has said Moore is unfit to serve as Alabama’s senator, for his extreme moral stances and his career of defying federal authority as a judge. Since the allegations of sexual impropriety with teens emerged in mid-November, the Jones campaign has run a television ad urging Republicans disgusted with Moore to vote Democratic instead, and another based on comments by the president’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka, saying that child predators deserve “a special place in hell.”

But during Monday’s rally, Moore painted Jones as out of touch with the values of Alabama Christian conservatives regarding abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights, both in public accommodations and in the military. Jones, Moore said, will champion those causes. “Liberal judges” who agree should be impeached, Moore said.

“I have vowed that when I go to Washington as senator to bring a knowledge of the Constitution and of the God who is its foundation,” Moore said. “And they don’t want me to do it. … They don’t want a conservative rebel.”

Moore acknowledged the national attention the election has received, both as a battle between the establishment and insurgent wings of the GOP and because of its recent notoriety. Dozens of national and state television and print reporters, who were told before the event that Moore would not answer media questions, ringed the room.

All of the political and personal attacks are designed to distract from the true issues Alabama voters want resolved, Moore said. “I appreciate the people of Alabama and what you stand for.”

People clapped when someone in the back of the room yelled back, “We appreciate you.”

As the audience and media dispersed, rally organizers handed out cookies.