Alabama Republican Roy Moore is mulling another run for Senate, potentially seeking to rebound from his 2017 campaign that spiraled into disaster after he was hit with sexual misconduct allegations.
Moore hinted at the possibility on Friday during an interview with American Family Radio’s “Focal Point” show, an evangelical broadcast during which conservative host Bryan Fischer spoke supportively of the failed candidate.
“I’m seriously considering it,” Moore said of another campaign, claiming he faced an unfair playing field against Democrat Doug Jones when the two faced off for the empty seat left by Jeff Sessions when he became President Donald Trump’s attorney general. Moore continued:
I think that [the 2017 race] was stolen. I think that’s been pronounced in the national newspapers ― The New York Times, The Washington Post even has recognized that there was a disinformation campaign going on in September of 2017 by forces outside of Alabama that spent a lot of money not regulated by the [Federal Election Commission] in trying to dissuade Republicans from voting and encourage and enrage Democrats.
Last December, The New York Times reported that a band of Democratic techies carried out a small-scale Russian-style deception campaign targeting Facebook and Twitter in an effort to help Jones. However, the experiment was said to have not made any meaningful impact. A similar story appeared in The Washington Post the following month.
In a separate case in January, the Times revealed a group of progressive Democrats had waged a disinformation campaign, like the one previously reported, on Facebook and Twitter. While the Times noted “it is hard to say for sure” that the attempted trickery had zero impact, the Twitter accounts involved had a limited reach.
Undeniably detrimental to Moore’s 2017 run were the handful of stories that emerged shortly before Election Day from women who claimed to have been pursued by him as teenagers when he was in his 30s.
Days later in mid-November, another woman came forward, accusing Moore of having sexually abused her as a teen.
Moore, who joined a county district attorney’s office at age 30 and went on to serve as Alabama’s chief justice before being forced to resign for defying the U.S. Supreme Court, has denied the allegations.