A little over a week ago, the outcome of the special election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ vacated Alabama Senate seat seemed like a foregone conclusion. Despite some speculation inspired by a few errant polls, few were seriously considering that on December 12th, the winner could be anyone but the Republican nominee.
But the race turned on its head after a handful of women stepped forward to describe an alleged history of sexual abuse and child predation by Judge Roy Moore, the twice-unseated former State Chief Justice and erstwhile favorite to become Alabama’s junior Senator. Since the accusations first came out, Moore has hemorrhaged endorsements and support, and his candidacy is in serious jeopardy. Yet even as a once unthinkable Democratic victory inches closer to reality, many in the party are unsure how to proceed.
The consensus at the moment seems to be to sit tight and let the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, lead the way. “When they ask us for help, we’ll do it,” Chuck Schumer told reporters this week. “But it’s been an Alabama race, period.”
The national party’s deference to the Jones campaign is likely the best strategy in the short-term. Even before the allegations against Moore, Jones, a former U.S. attorney who successfully convicted two of the Klansmen behind the 1963 Birmingham Church Bombing, was putting up a serious fight.
But perhaps more importantly, the national Democratic Party’s brand in Alabama is downright toxic, leading one Republican strategist to claim that voters would “rather [elect]Satan” than let one of their Senate seats flip blue. Normal Democratic strategies — like parading star politicians across the campaign trail, or digging into donors’ pockets to jam the airwaves with ads — are unlikely to pay off in Alabama like they did in, say, Virginia. In fact, any overt association with national Democrats like Chuck Schumer could very well reverse the progress Jones has made through his grassroots, “kitchen table issues” campaign.
To put it simply, the Democrats were caught flat-footed, and now, in the face of perhaps the biggest political opportunity of the year, they’re at a loss for strategies that might work in the South. This isn’t an isolated shortcoming. Rather, it’s a sign of systematic and protracted neglect and comeuppance for a party that has essentially abandoned an entire region to decades of uncontested elections and single-party rule.
So yes, in the meantime, Democrats should lay low and let Jones and his team do the heavy lifting. But the party’s dilemma should wake them up to the fact that in the long-term, they need to develop new strategies to reach out to their base, rehabilitate their brand, and bring in disenchanted Republicans across the South. A candidate like Jones should never have to choose between national and state support. Under a healthy party, he would have both, and there would be no reason to pursue anything less than an all-out offensive against an imploding candidate like Moore.
There are people of good faith in Alabama who are rightly sickened by the grotesque spectacle that their state politics has become, and they deserve better than what the Republican Party is offering. At the very least, the Democrats owe it to them to be able to put up a fight.
Ben Sorensen, a senior studying political science, is a weekly columnist for Stanford Politics.