Blow to Trump: Democrat Jones Defeats Roy Moore For Alabama Senate

The race was marked by accusations of sexual misconduct against Republican candidate Roy Moore.

File image of Doug Jones.

(Photo: AP)

Democrat Doug Jones won a bitter fight for a US Senate seat in deeply conservative Alabama on Tuesday, 12 December, US media projected, dealing a political blow to President Donald Trump in a race marked by accusations of sexual misconduct against Republican candidate Roy Moore.

US President Donald Trump congratulated Jones on Tuesday, 12 December, for winning the race against the Republican candidate the president backed.

The stunning upset by Jones makes him the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and will trim the Republicans’ already narrow Senate majority to 51-49, endangering Trump’s agenda and opening the door for Democrats to possibly retake the chamber in next year’s congressional elections.

The ugly campaign drew national attention and split the Republican Party over accusations from several women that Moore pursued them when they were teens and he was in his 30s.

Trump endorsed Moore even as other party leaders in Washington walked away from him, but Jones, 63, a former federal prosecutor, portrayed the campaign as a referendum on decency and promised the state's voters he would not embarrass them in Washington.

Moore, 70, a Christian conservative who was removed from the state Supreme Court in Alabama twice for ignoring federal law, denied the sexual allegations and said he did not know any of the women who made them. Reuters has not independently verified the allegations.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had called on Moore to drop out of the race, and other Senate leaders had suggested he should eventually be expelled from the Senate if elected.

Trump had recorded robo-calls to voters to bolster turnout for Moore, and held a campaign rally across the border in Florida last week. Trump's former senior adviser, Steve Bannon, appeared at two rallies with Moore down the stretch.

“Roy Moore will always vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!” Trump said in a Twitter post in which he criticised Jones as a potential “puppet” of the Democratic congressional leadership.

(The article has been edited for length.)