BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (CN) — Twice-removed former state supreme court justiceRoy Moore defeated Donald Trump-endorsed incumbent Luther Strange on Tuesday in Alabama’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The Associated Press reported that Moore beat Strange by 9 percentage points.
It was a strange race in a strange political year for Alabama.
Moore, 70, was twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court, in 2003 after defying a judge’s order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse, and in 2016 for telling the state’s probate judges to defy federal orders on same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, he remains enormously popular in Alabama, and he showed it by his convincing victory in the special primary.
Strange, 64, was Alabama’s attorney general when Governor Robert Bentley appointed him to Sessions’ vacant Senate seat in February. As attorney general, Strange had asked that impeachment proceedings against Bentley be delayed because his office was investigating him, though he later denied that there was such an investigation. Appointing Strange to the Senate seat effectively removed him from the Bentley investigation. Then in March, the day after Bentley fired the state police commander, a state police officer revealed that Bentley, who was married, was conducting a sexual affair with a top aide, also married. Bentley’s sexually explicit phone call to the aide became public; his wife of 50 years filed for divorce, and he resigned the governorship in April after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor campaign finance violations.
President Trump endorsed Strange in the special primary, and traveled to Alabama to do it again last week, as did Vice President Mike Pence, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell helped drum up $10 million in donations for the incumbent. Strange’s loss in Alabama, where Trump is widely popular, confused the Republican political landscape, leaving incumbents and pundits wondering how much weight the president or the majority leader may swing in next year’s elections.
Moore was supported by Alabama’s Evangelical voters and, further confusing the political winds, by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
“I believe we can make America great but we must make America good,” Moore said in his victory speech Tuesday night. “We cannot make America good without acknowledging … that sovereign source of our law, liberty and government, which is almighty God.”
The election result in overwhelmingly Republican Alabama reveals deep frustration with Republican-controlled Congress. Moore’s success may trigger other Republicans to challenge incumbent Republicans in primaries before the 2018 midterm elections.
Moore on Tuesday donned a cowboy hat and mounted a horse to ride to his polling station in Gallant.
An hour away, outside Birmingham, voters trickled into the polls in Pelham. Former Pelham Mayor Bobby Hayes cast his vote for Strange.
“I have zero confidence in Roy Moore,” he said. “I have been around a long time and know what happened with him. If someone in his court had disobeyed his orders, there would have been trouble. How can the head of the Supreme Court not enforce the law and abide by an order handed down by a higher court?”
Moore announced his run for the Senate in April this year, just days after the Alabama Supreme Court upheld his removal from the bench.
Pelham resident Carol Colvert switched sides during the campaign.