MONTGOMERY: Voters in Alabama headed to the polls on Tuesday in a hard-fought US Senate race in which President Donald Trump has endorsed fellow Republican Roy Moore, whose campaign has been clouded by allegations of misconduct toward teenagers.
Moore, 70, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, is battling Democrat Doug Jones, 63, a former US attorney who is hoping to pull off an upset victory in the deeply conservative Southern state.
Polls opened at 7 am (1300 GMT) in the Alabama special election for the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions, who became US attorney general in the Trump administration.
The Alabama contest has divided the Republican Party on whether it is better to support Moore in order to maintain their slim majority in the US Senate or shun him because of the sexual allegations.
Trump has strongly backed Moore but several other Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from the candidate.
“Roy Moore will always vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!” Trump said in a Twitter post in which he criticised Jones as a potential “puppet” of the Democratic congressional leadership.
On the eve of Tuesday’s election, Moore was joined on the campaign trail by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and an executive at the right-wing Breitbart News site. Bannon framed the Alabama election as a showdown between establishment elites and populist power and excoriated Republicans who declined to support Moore.
Moore, who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, has made conservative Christian beliefs a centrepiece of his campaign and sought to energise evangelicals in Alabama.
Moore told the rally on Monday: “I want to make America great again with President Trump. I want America great, but I want America good, and she can’t be good until we go back to God.”
Without mentioning Moore by name, Republican former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, an African-American who grew up in Alabama, issued a statement on Monday calling the special election “one of the most significant in Alabama’s history.”
An average of recent polls by the RealClearPolitics website showed Moore ahead by a slight margin of 2.2 percentage points.
— Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
