Alabama’s Largest Media Outlets Condemn Moore
Former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice ‘simply cannot be a U.S. Senator,’ papers say
Alabama’s preeminent print and digital news outlets issued a scathing condemnation of U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore Tuesday, saying it it “unthinkable” that the former state Supreme Court chief justice could ever be elected to the Senate.
The AL.com editorial board called Moore’s “taste for dating high school girls” when he was single and in his 30s “unseemly.”
AL.com is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Advance Publications, which also owns flagship newspapers in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Mobile, three of Alabama’s four most populous cities. Each of those newspapers uses AL.com as its digital landing spot.
A host of GOP lawmakers have called for Moore, the Republican nominee for Alabama’s special election for the Senate on Dec. 12, to end his campaign in the wake of allegations by five women that he dated or had sexual contact with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One of those alleged women has said she was 14 when Moore undressed her and tried to place her hand on his genitals.
Moore has vehemently denied the allegations against him.
“I believe the women,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday at a news conference in Louisville. He said Moore should step aside.
Who in Congress Is Pushing Roy Moore to Drop Senate Bid?
[jwp-video n=”1″]
President Donald Trump has said that if the allegations against Moore are true, he believed the judge would drop out of the race.
National Republican Senate Committee Chairman Cory Gardner took things a step further Monday, saying that if Moore “refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him, because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate.”
The NRSC has cut ties with Moore’s fundraising committee, the first tangible step of distancing itself from the candidate.
“The seriousness of these incidents cannot be overstated,” the AL.com editorial said. “They should not be parsed with talk of statutes of limitations or whether proof exists. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a consideration for the courtroom, not the ballot box. When choosing our representative before the rest of the world, character matters.”
