Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore defied the odds on Election Day by reclaiming his old job in a close vote that put many state and campus Republicans in a politically compromising position.
With 100 percent of statewide precincts reporting, Moore defeated the Democratic candidate, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Vance 52 percent to 48 percent. Moore received 1,046,104 votes while Vance fell short of early estimates, only earning the support of 970,533 Alabamians.
Moore seemed to benefit from straight party voting which helped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney get over 60 percent of the Yellowhammer State’s vote. Despite the Supreme Court race coinciding with a presidential election in a reliably red state, Moore was only able to win by roughly 70,000 votes. By comparison, Romney beat President Barack Obama by more than 450,000 votes in Alabama.
Jeff Elrod, the executive director for The University of Alabama College Republicans, was one of the many GOP members to split their ticket and vote for Romney and Vance.
“I was surprised by how handily he won that election,” Elrod said of Moore. “I don’t want Alabama to be seen as moving backward or being stuck.”
Elrod said he did not think the Chief Justice should hold overtly political views.
Moore is not afraid of controversy. Known around the nation as the “Ten Commandment Judge,” he was forced out of office in 2003 after a highly publicized controversy involving the separation of church and state.
Pro-LGBTQ UA students also called out Moore in one of last week’s of the campaign because they felt that he made offensive comments about gay and lesbians at a Tea Party rally.
“The Chief Justice should be concerned with upholding the laws that are on the books and determining whether the laws that are passed by the state legislature coincides with the constitution of our state and the federal Constitution,” Elrod said. “His role is not supposed to be an expressly political position.”
The president of the UA College Democrats, Robert Christl strongly supported Vance and partially blamed the defeat on the short amount of time he had to campaign.
In one of the more bizarre episodes of the campaign, Vance replaced the original Democratic nominee Harry Lyon, a perennial candidate, in mid-August after the state party disqualified Lyon for controversial statements he posted online.
As a result, Vance only had three months to campaign, while Moore had been running a general election campaign for nearly eight.
“I’m very upset,” Christl said. “I think that his victory will reflect poorly on the state as a whole.”
Christl said he believed in giving everyone a second chance but hoped Moore wouldn’t have another stunt like he did with the Ten Commandments statue.
“I hope he wises up and actually decides to do the job that he was elected to do as opposed to making a scene out of himself,” Christl said.
Connor Cook, the external affairs director for the UA College Democrats, was surprised by the results.
“I had a pretty good feeling of Judge Vance winning that race and when it came down to it, Roy Moore winning with 52 percent was kind of shocking to me,” Cook said. “I knew a great deal of Republicans who were supporting Judge Vance because Roy Moore is so far out there.”
Joe Mahoney is a UA College Republican member who served as the student director for current Chief Justice Chuck Malone’s campaign to keep his job. Malone was appointed to the position by Gov. Robert Bentley and lost in a contentious three-way primary to Moore.
Mahoney did not vote for Moore on Election Day.
“On a personal level Roy Moore is a good man; he is someone who is very charismatic and is very passionate,” Mahoney said. “I feel that it’s very important that everyone remembers that it’s one thing to be a Christian and to make your decisions with those beliefs informing your decision making, but I think that’s a different thing to use one interpretation of a religion and to ultimately make that law.”
Moore will begin his six-year term in January and will head up an all-Republican Court.
