“Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory,” President Trump tweeted Tuesday night, after the Democrat narrowly defeated conservative Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama special election for Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat.
Trump also noted, “The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!”
Trump endorsed Republican Luther Strange in the primary, but when Moore won, the president repeatedly urged Alabama voters to choose Moore, despite allegations of Moore’s inappropriate relationships with teenage girls, one as young as 14, when Moore was in his 30s.
In his first tweet of Wednesday, Trump said he knew Moore could not win: “The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!”
With 100 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Jones had 671,151 votes, or 49.9 percent, compared to Moore’s 650,436 votes, or 48.4 percent. There were 22,819 write-in votes, many of which might have gone to Moore were it not for the controversy surrounding him.
According to CBS News exit polling, Democrat Jones got 96 percent of the black vote, while Moore got 68 percent of the white vote. Fifty-one percent of independents voted for Jones; and 57 percent of women and 60 percent of young people also voted for Jones.
Moore has not yet conceded the race, but there seems to be no question that Mr. Jones will be coming to Washington.
“When the vote is this close, it’s not over,” Moore told supporters at his election night rally. He complained about being “painted in an unfavorable and unfaithful light,” and said he will let the “process play out.”
Jones told his supporters he’s been “waiting all my life, and now I just don’t know what the hell to say.”
“At the end of the day, this — this entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign — this campaign has been about the rule of law. This campaign has been about common courtesy and decency and making sure everyone in this state, regardless of which ZIP code you live in, is going to get a fair shake in life. And let me just say this, folks, to all of those — all of my future colleagues in Washington, to all — I had such wonderful help.
“But I want to make sure, in all seriousness, there are important issues facing this country, there are important issues of health care and jobs and the economy. And I want to — I would like, as everyone in the entire probably free world knows right now, we’ve tried to make sure that this campaign was about finding common ground and reaching across and actually getting things done for the people,” Jones said.
(By Susan Jones, courtesy CNSnews.com)
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