“Roy Moore is poised to jump into the Alabama Senate race in a bid to earn a rematch with Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat who handed the former judge a stunning defeat in a 2017 special election,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“Moore this past weekend told a gathering of grassroots Republicans that he would announce his 2020 plans in a matter of weeks.”
A new Mason Dixon poll in Alabama finds Roy Moore leading a GOP Senate primary race with 27%, followed by Rep. Mo Brooks at 18%, Rep. Bradley Byrne at 13% and Rep. Gary Palmer at 11%.
Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville announced on Twitter that he is joining the Republican race to win back the Alabama Senate seat from Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in 2020.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), one of President Trump’s most devoted loyalists on Capitol Hill who represents the Florida Panhandle, has told GOP colleagues he is considering moving across the state line to run for the Senate in Alabama in 2020, The Hill reports.
“Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose unsuccessful 2017 campaign for the U.S. Senate was marred by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, said on Friday that he may again run for the Senate,” Reuters reports.
Said Moore: “I’m seriously considering it, I think that the 2017 Senate race was stolen.”
Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) is all but daring Roy Moore (R) for a rematch in the Alabama Senate race, Politico reports.
“Moore, who was defeated in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations, said this year that he believes the election was ‘stolen’ from him by Democrats and a disinformation program on social media.”
Said Jones: “If he really believes that and if the Republican Party really believes that then they all ought to just step aside, have a press conference with him and let’s just do it again.”
“Republicans landed a top-tier recruit Wednesday in a race critical to their hopes of holding the Senate in 2020, when GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne jumped into the campaign against the most vulnerable Democrat up for reelection, Alabama’s Doug Jones,” Politico reports.
“After his shocking special election win in 2017 in deeply conservative Alabama, defeating Jones is the GOP’s best opportunity to flip a Democratic-held seat — making the contest a vital insurance policy for the party to protect its majority, currently 53-47.”
New York Times: “Jones, the Democrat who was an unwitting beneficiary of misinformation tactics during a special election in Alabama in 2017, asked the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday to investigate the episodes… The overall effort, which cost $100,000, was underwritten through an intermediary by Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn.”
Said Jones: “Such deceptive tactics have no place in American politics and must be repudiated by those involved in our political system.”
“Republicans are certain they can win back the Alabama Senate seat they lost in spectacular fashion last year. They just aren’t sure whether Jeff Sessions is the one to do it,” Politico reports.
“Sessions’ name surfaced as a potential candidate immediately after he was dumped as attorney general this month. But he could be dogged by his strained relationship with President Donald Trump, who remains wildly popular in Alabama and savaged Sessions throughout his tenure at the Justice Department.”
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions “is considering running for his old Alabama Senate seat in 2020,” Politico reports.
“After Sessions left the Senate in 2017, his vacated seat was won by Democrat Doug Jones in a special election upset. Jones is up for a full term in 2020, and he is widely viewed as the most vulnerable incumbent senator facing reelection given Alabama’s conservative tilt. Republicans are certain to contest the seat aggressively as they look to protect their majority.”
Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) told The Hill that is taking steps to mount a possible Senate bid in 2020 against incumbent Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL).
“The conservative House Republican is reaching out to colleagues in the Alabama delegation and driving around the state to gauge support from voters.”
“Days after a woman accused U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety, two Moore supporters approached her attorney with an unusual request,” the Washington Post reports.
“They asked lawyer Eddie Sexton to drop the woman as a client and say publicly that he did not believe her. The damaging statement would be given to Breitbart News, then run by former White House strategist Stephen Bannon.”
“In exchange, Sexton said in recent interviews, the men offered to pay him $10,000 and promised to introduce him to Bannon and others in the nation’s capital. Parts of Sexton’s account are supported by recorded phone conversations, text messages and people in whom he confided at the time.”
Wade Perry, the manager of Doug Jones’ (D) longshot U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama, told McClatchy that “before Jones even won his own primary, and hatched a plan with campaign chairman Giles Perkins. Their realization: the campaign needed to show Republican voters — some of whom hadn’t voted for a Democrat in decades — that it would be OK to support one this time around.”
“And what better way, they thought, than letting the average Alabamian see rows of Jones signs in their neighbors’ yards?”
“Perry himself can scarcely believe he’s talking about them seriously… But the man who managed the most stunning upset in recent Democratic political history has a larger — and much more important — point he wants to make; his party must be willing to try something different with their politics and campaigns, especially as it prepares to compete this November in a litany of Republican-rich areas.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) “is confronting a fierce backlash from conservatives over his refusal to support Roy Moore in last month’s special election — with Moore backers pushing a censure resolution and robocall campaign targeting the powerful lawmaker,” Politico reports.
Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson lost her home in a fire that is now under investigation by an arson task force, the Birmingham News reports.
“Tina Johnson, who first came to public notice for accusing Senate candidate Roy Moore of grabbing her in his office in the early 1990s, said her home… caught fire Tuesday morning… By the time the flames were extinguished, Johnson and her family had lost everything they owned.”
Martin Wishnatsky, who worked for failed Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R), tells the Birmingham News that his background “is 100 percent Jewish” but that “he accepted Christ in his thirties.”
Said Wishnatsky: “I’m a Messianic Jew. That’s the term they use for a Jewish person who has accepted Christ.”
Roy Moore, the first Republican to lose a U.S. Senate race in Alabama in 25 years, moved to block state officials from certifying the victory of his Democratic rival on Thursday afternoon because of “systematic voter fraud,” the New York Times reports.
Politico notes that Moore has continued to fundraise by asking donors to contribute to his “election integrity fund,” pledging to pursue “voter fraud and other irregularities at polling locations throughout the state.”
Meanwhile, The Hill reports Moore “says he completed a lie detector test after the Alabama Senate election concluded to prove the allegations of sexual misconduct are untrue.”
The Associated Press: reports that the rift between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions “still has not healed. Recently, Trump bemoaned the Republicans’ loss in a special election in Alabama and in part blamed Sessions, whose departure from the Senate to head to Justice necessitated the election.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
"There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them."
-- Chuck Todd, host of "Meet the Press"
"Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all."
-- Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
"Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
-- Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
"The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom -- nicely packaged, constantly updated... What political junkie could ask for more?"
-- Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.