Alabama Megathread: Bombshell allegations

[Anna Komnene]

[Anna Komnene]

Might not be an answerable question, but does low turnout benefit a certain republican/democrat?

Wasn't roy moore getting largest amounts of support the older voters? And don't older voters tend to turn out at highest rates?

If I had to guess, I'd say it benefits the people with the strongest organization, who I'd assume would be Jones on the democrat side. It's probably Strange for republicans, but he might have a tough time getting his people to turn out if they don't like him that much. If Moore's supporters are more enthusiastic, that could help him. I'd guess it would not be good for Brooks if his support is mostly young people. But hey, I'm just a loony gal from New York. What do I know about Alabama?

[Anna Komnene]

Well, the good news for Jones is if Moore does win the runoff, he might not have a huge funding disadvantage.

As of the end of July, Jones had 99k on hand while Moore had 173k and will have to keep dealing with an onslaught of cash from Strange in the runoff (he had close to a million at the same point). Meanwhile, Jones gets a headstart on fundraising for the general and can focus on building his organization and outreach. The bad news is it looks like he's starting from a really low level of enthusiasm from AL dems.

[Anna Komnene]

What are Jones's policies?

https://dougjonesforsenate.com/priorities/

• Reduce regulations on small business
• Oppose tax cuts for wealthy
• Close the gap between rich and poor in public education, identifies this as his biggest priority
• Support programs for education, infrastructure, childcare, nutrition
• Living Wage
• Supports program of pubic service in exchange for reduced college costs
• Supports investment in renewable energy and conservation; supports Paris Accords
• Wants programs to help coal miners get healthcare and job retraining
• Pro Choice. Supports Planned Parenthood
• Supports equal pay for women
• Supports ACA with improvements
• Says healthcare shouldn't depend on where you live, references Alabama rejecting the medicaid expansion
• Says insurance companies shouldn't discriminate against women

Wow I actually like this guy. Wish I could have him in NY instead of Schumer!

[Anna Komnene]

Can anyone with more experience with FEC reporting explain why there hasn't been an update for the runoff yet? I was looking at the schedule, and it seems to indicate that candidates involved in the runoff (so I would assume Strange and Moore but not Jones) were required to file numbers with a close of books at Sept 6. The mailing deadline was Sept 11 and the filing deadline was Sept 14. Yet, there are still no files since the ones that were posted in July. Is that normal? I'm interested because I really want to see if the fundraising gap between Strange and Moore is narrowing or not.

https://www.fec.gov/updates/alabama-special-election-reporting-senate-2017/

[Anna Komnene]

Right. Moore is a more evil person but they would have the exact same policy impact in the Senate, with Moore just worsening the GOP's brand overall.

That's not entirely true though. Politicians do more than just vote on stuff. They sponsor bills and amendments that may never even exist without them. They interact with other politicians and can influence them by making deals or even campaigning for them or fundraising for them. They make public speeches than can influence people in their state and people who look up to them. They have relationships with PACs, donors, and companies that can influence goodness knows what. They hire staff. That impacts those people for sure. They provide constituent services and can theoretically choose how that takes place and if they're discriminating against certain constituents... like that story of the rep who forced Muslims to answer degrading questionnaire when they came to the office for help. Even if they don't discriminate, some people may feel more comfortable going to one politician for help over another. For example, I've asked Gillibrand for help with a personal matter and written to her on a few political issues, but I've never interacted with Schumer or my House rep at all.

It's tempting to say that it doesn't matter who's elected because of the vote similarities, but it really misses a lot of nuance about what politicians actually do. It's why I was an enthusiastic Mark Begich supporter despite disagreeing with him on several issues and despite a lot of progressives crusading against him. His presence there was a massive boon to Alaska natives that most people will never know about because his tenure was partially about being their advocate in Washington. I mean, that's not to say that Luther Strange would be this amazing guy by comparison to Roy Moore. Each has their own unique shortcomings, but they aren't the same person.

[Anna Komnene]

We finally got campaign finance reports for the runoff. Yay! The period is from 7/27 - 9/06

Strange

Raised: $1,033,844.76 (only like 26k of this was unitemized individual contributions... lol...)
Spent: $1,773,861.44
Cash on hand: $631,814
Debt: $245,000

Moore

Raised: $955,522.83 (377k were unitemized individual contributions)
Spent: $843,502.33
Cash on hand: $284,407.06
Debt: $3,500

So... Strange still has a cash advantage over Moore, but his fundraising edge seems to be eroding significantly. His cash from the last reporting period is down 300k while Moore's is up 100k. Strange and Moore got a relatively similar amount from large, itemized contributions, but Moore has a significant advantage among smaller, unitemized contributions. Strange, however, has continued to rake in the money from PACs and authorized committees to make up for his lack of small contributions.

My guess is that Strange will be able to continue to raise the money he needs down the stretch, but I think his money edge over Moore might be eroding too.

No reports from Jones who wasn't required to report because he isn't in a runoff.

[Anna Komnene]

Wow, another $1.2 million for Strange from Senate Leadership Fund and Chamber of Commerce.

https://twitter.com/rpyers/status/910607642371878913

Guess they got pretty spooked by Strange's meh fundraising report.

[Anna Komnene]

The democrats should do what they did with SC-5 here - sneak Jones some money here and there, but don't make a serious national party effort. The problem with GA-6 was that the Dems spent too much and ended up generating overall turnout similar to that of a regularly scheduled election, which does not currently work to their advantage in normally republican seats.

I agree. Maybe a late visit from Obama to Birmingham could do some good.

[Anna Komnene]

So we all agree that Roy Moore's imminent election to the Senate hurts any conceivable remaining chances of repealing Obamacare, yeah?

I hear a lot of GOP reps and senators say they're deeply troubled by the repeal bills and then vote for them anyway. I'll believe that Moore is a no when (and optimistically if!!!) I see him actually cast the vote in McConnell's face McCain style.

[Anna Komnene]

It's not like he's been shy about his being pro choice on his website. Tbh, this election was never about Jones somehow winning over mythical Alabama swing voters. It's all about turnout in a December off year election. The only way Jones wins is if dems turn out and republicans stay home. Maybe being strongly pro choice will be a motivating factor for AL dems.

[Anna Komnene]

It's not like he's been shy about his being pro choice on his website. Tbh, this election was never about Jones somehow winning over mythical Alabama swing voters. It's all about turnout in a December off year election. The only way Jones wins is if dems turn out and republicans stay home. Maybe being strongly pro choice will be a motivating factor for AL dems.

I haven't seen polling of Alabama on Abortion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's like Louisiana, where even the state democratic establishment is well to the right of the national democratic platform.

I don't know much about it either, but let me just put it this way. Terri Sewell is also pro choice and so was Artur Davis when he had AL's democratic seat. So was Obama when he was running for president.

[Anna Komnene]

Okay, I'll put it another way. The chances that Jones would win this election were always slim. His main chance of winning is that this is a December off year election where literally not much else is being voted on except like a couple tax referendums and that maybe a lot of people are burnt out on elections. The way that Jones achieves the <5% he has of winning is by somehow matching presidential/gubernatorial levels of turnout on the Democratic side while at the same time Republicans being mired in off year special election levels of turnout. As long as turnout is low, the votes are out there for a Democrat to win, regardless of what "deeply disturbing" positions that Democrat has on pointless wedge issues where he will not have much of any impact on national policy anyway. The chances that he can actually get his voters to come out en masse are pretty low, but he has to try to do it.

If Jones was able to get 650k - 750k votes, he might have an outside shot, and there are that many AL dem voters. It's just a matter of getting them out to vote in much higher numbers than the GOP voters, which won't be easy to say the least.

[Anna Komnene]

I guess I just don't see how this is some big game changer. He was asked a question and gave an answer. Maybe he would have said something else if he had time to think about it more, I don't know. I have a hard time imagining that die hard pro lifers were going to go out and check the dem box. Even if Jones was ambivalent or didn't say anything, there would be the assumption that he's pro choice just because he's a democrat. Even if he was pro life, he could still be attacked for defending Obamacare or wanting more welfare programs. And it's not like being pro life is this great boon for AL dems either. Parker Griffith was pro life and some good that did him in the 2014 gubernatorial race. He got like 400k votes.

[Anna Komnene]

The problem with moving the election out is there is no guarantee Moore drops out. He could still run in the later election and the responses from county chairmen indicate they are not willing to cross him.

I think that is like problem number 97 on the list of problems with that idea. The first problem being moving an election because your candidate is losing is the kind of thing a country like Myanmar would do. And there's no way they would move the election if the democrat was the one with the problems.

[Anna Komnene]

The more I hear about these allegations, the more I believe they are true. Moore needs to step aside.

I applaud you for putting country before party, we need more Republicans like you.

This. Also, I would encourage you to vote for Jones as a punishment to the Republican party. Tell them to give you a quality candidate.

I would be all in for Jones but I really don't like his stance on abortion.

I know it can be hard to stomach voting for someone you disagree with on an important issue. But something you might want to consider is that if Jones wins, he'll be up for re-election in 2020 the same time Trump is running for re-election. Jones would have pretty much no chance to get re-elected, and maybe the Republicans will come up with someone to run against him that you'll like a lot more. But if Moore wins, it might be a lot harder to get rid of him in a primary unless he actually goes to jail. Not to mention that he will be representing you and your state in Congress for all that time.

[Anna Komnene]

Does anyone have any fundraising figures?

If you're interested in figures that would take the most recent developments into account, those won't be released until the end of the month. Right now the most up to day figures are as of September 30.

[Anna Komnene]

There's a couple things to note about those figures. One is that Sepember 30 was just a few days after the Republican runoff and the dems didn't have any runoff. But on the other hand, Jones has raised way more than any recent AL democrat I know of. The last democrat to run for senate in Alabama raised like 15,000 dollars or something like that.

[Anna Komnene]

As if most of the posters on this forum are 60 year olds from Massachusetts that would have had the chance to "elect Ted Kennedy over and over for over 40 years"?

[Anna Komnene]

A net D+2 is now a very plausible outcome for 2018, between the Heller and Flake seats and the potential for a Cochran or McCain retirement, and the potential for Collins and/or Murkowski to become a Dem-caucusing Indy if it's tied is significant.  I wouldn't be entirely shocked if Collins and Murkowski left the GOP this December if Jones won.    

Why would they do that? They have absolutely no reason to switch. That also assumes that the dems hold all of their seats in red states like McCaskill, Donnelly, Manchin, Heitkamp, Nelson, etc. It's a pretty big assumption.

[Anna Komnene]

Flake says 'if it's a choice between Roy Moore and a Democrat, I'll go with the Democrat''.

After today's round of accusations, the increase of proof and the relatively strong pushback from McConnell and Co I have a feeling that this may be seriously shifting

It's good to see a Republican politician actually say this. BS write-ins for Mike Pence or Mo Brooks don't help defeat a candidate as much as actually voting for their competitor. Sometimes hard choices have to be made.

[Anna Komnene]

Still Lean R. A month is a very long time in politics, and we have precisely one poll showing Jones in the lead, and even that poll shows him under 50. Remember that in southern states, virtually all undecideds break for the republican.

I think the race will still be close, but I think it's worth pointing out that the polls only factored the first 3 days or so of the scandal. Most people don't follow the news as rabidly as Atlas posters, so there's still time for everything to sink in.

[Anna Komnene]

Can we stop with the cherry picking random internet comments to generalize about whole states? There are good people in Alabama, and most of them don't waste away their days spamming up AL.com.

[Anna Komnene]

What needs to happen is that Luther Strange must immediately resign. A new senator would be appointed to fill his seat, and a new special election would be called. Unfortunately, it's too late to take Moore off the ballot at this point. Strange gives no indication that he'd do this, but it would be the right thing not only for the GOP but for America. If he doesn't, the best thing that can happen from a republican perspective is Moore winning then being forced to resign, which would also lead to another special election.

Um no there is no reason to believe a new election would need to be called. The governor would just appoint a placeholder and the current special election would still fill the seat.