Aided by scandal, Dems fighting math and history in Alabama

Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.

Renegade Republican Roy Moore may be plagued by scandal, but it will take more than that to convince the voters of 44th Place North to show up for Democrat Doug Jones on Tuesday.

In a state where Democrats are used to losing, the malaise is easy to find in this African-American neighborhood in suburban Birmingham, even on the final weekend before Alabama’s high-profile Senate contest.

“A lot of people don’t vote because they think their vote don’t count,” Ebonique Jiles, 27, said after promising a Jones volunteer she would support the Democrat in Tuesday’s election. “I’ll vote regardless of whether he wins or loses.”

With history and math working against them in deep-red Alabama, Democrats are fighting to energize a winning coalition of African-Americans and moderate Republicans – a delicate balancing act on full display Saturday as Jones and his network of volunteers canvassed the state.

Nearly 100 miles south of Birmingham, during an appearance near the staging ground for Selma’s landmark “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in 1965, Jones declared that Alabama has an opportunity to go “forward and not backward.”

And Saturday evening, the Democrat organized two get-out-the-vote concerts expected to draw overwhelmingly white voters – including some open-minded Republicans – in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than a quarter century.

Moore had no public events Saturday, an extraordinary silence three days before the election but in line with a final-weeks strategy that featured very few public events in which he could be forced to address allegations of sexual misconduct.

The 70-year-old Moore is facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.

He has largely denied the allegations.