Tornado Alley (PROG)

[PegnVA]

IN RACE AGAINST ROY MOORE, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IS MOSTLY ON HIS OWN
By JESS BIDGOOD, NOV. 19, 2017

HELENA, Ala. — It was unusual enough for Keith Dorsey to open his door in this heavily Republican Birmingham suburb and be greeted by a Democratic canvasser, a sight normally as rare here as a Clemson fan. But these are unusual times.

“This is our only opportunity,” Mr. Dorsey, a Democratic-leaning engineer, said, referring to the tight Senate contest between the increasingly embattled Republican Roy S. Moore and the Democrat Doug Jones. “We need to seize it.”

Even the most optimistic Democrat knows it’s not at all clear the party can.

Mr. Moore, long a controversial and polarizing figure, stands accused of molesting or making unwanted advances toward numerous young women and girls, one as young as 14, when he was in his 30s. That has rendered him radioactive for national Republicans and led The Birmingham News to bellow on Sunday’s front page: “Stand for Decency, Reject Roy Moore.”

And the Democratic candidate, Mr. Jones, is a respected former prosecutor best known for convicting two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, who was raising the possibility of a truly competitive race even before the accusations against Mr. Moore.

But opportunity has knocked on the door of a Democratic operation with the lights out. With a fairly anemic state party, there is little existing infrastructure for routine campaign activities like phone banks or canvassing drives. National Democrats, while helping to pour in money, are taking pains to keep the race at arm’s length, figuring their presence could hurt rather than help Mr. Jones. There are no beloved statewide officeholders or popular party elders to rally the troops.

“The Democratic Party is not behind him pushing him up the hill to victory, because they don’t have a wagon for him to ride in right now,” said Mark Kennedy, a former state Supreme Court justice and erstwhile chairman of the Democratic Party. “He’s got to do it all by himself.”

To win, analysts say, Mr. Jones needs to galvanize black voters’ support and try to pick off moderate white Republicans repulsed by Mr. Moore. Mr. Jones’s supporters are trying to make headway in counties that voted 65 percent or more for President Trump. Even as some polls show Mr. Jones gaining support — and perhaps, after the allegations, opening a lead — he faces stiff odds.

“He knows that if he wins,” said Parker Griffith, a former Alabama congressman and an unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor in 2014, “it will be by the skin of his teeth.”

The path to victory for Mr. Jones would most likely run through places like Shelby County, which contains Helena, which supported Mr. Moore’s opponent, Luther Strange, in the Senate primary.

“That’s turf that has been Republican,” said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster based in Alabama. “Shelby County and the Jefferson County suburbs would have been the epicenter of where Doug Jones can find voters against Roy Moore that just have not been in play for Democrats in a generation.”

And so about 17 canvassers organized by the county Democratic Party took it upon themselves to go and find some Saturday.

“For so long, in this area, if you were a Democrat in a social setting, you just kept your mouth shut,” said Doug Hoffman, the vice chairman of the local party, which he said has grown from a handful of members two years ago to 120 paying members now. “Democrats are finally, at last, out here in the suburbs.”

Winding through a subdivision, Mr. Hoffman found a willing listener in Samuel Davis Jr., 53, an employee of the Birmingham Waterworks.

“You got one of those big signs I can put in my front yard?” Mr. Davis asked. He planned to support Mr. Jones despite reservations about the accusations against Mr. Moore. “This could have come out long before,” Mr. Davis said. “You had to really question what motivated people to come out.”

But other canvassers, like Bill and Becky Murphy of nearby Chelsea, met more resistance, like the Republican who shut the door with a quick “sorry.” And there was Sandy Chatfield, 68, a registered Republican who had voted for Mr. Strange in the primary but had decided to vote for Mr. Moore despite the allegations.

“They do give me some pause, but I’m not going to blanket throw him under the bus,” Ms. Chatfield said, adding, “I just think it’s not worth losing the Senate.”

Mr. Hoffman, meanwhile, was methodically handing his business card to every receptive voter he met, urging them to join the Democrats for meetings or a monthly social at the Margarita Grill (where, he promised, they could “talk politics and feel comfortable”).

“This thing,” he said, referring to the buzz around the special election, “is a gift to Democrats to get organized.”

In recent decades, the state Democratic Party has been known more for its dysfunction than for decisive victories, with the party’s influence now mostly limited to some local governments, including mayor’s offices in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

The Democratic Party’s problems in Alabama track with the broader shift in the South’s political leanings and loyalties. But as Republicans have taken over Alabama politics, the Democratic Party has done little to help itself.

An intraparty feud in the mid-1980s helped a Republican to win the governor’s office. (That governor, Guy Hunt, ultimately appointed Mr. Moore to a Circuit Court judgeship in 1992.) The kingmaking, Democratic-backing Alabama Education Association saw its influence collapse. Corruption investigations and convictions gave Republicans ammunition to complain about Democratic self-dealing in Montgomery, the capital.

And although Republican factionalism now draws most of the attention in Alabama, the state’s Democrats have long held a reputation as a fractured bunch beset by rivalries and fiefs.

As Democratic activists warned that the party had become sclerotic and disorganized, the electoral defeats piled up.

Since 1995, Democrats have held the governor’s office for just four years, and in 2010, they lost complete control of the Legislature after 136 years. Four years later, no Democratic nominee to be a constitutional officer, including governor and attorney general, won more than 41 percent of the statewide vote. Democrats did not even put up a nominee for the United States Senate seat that Mr. Jones could now seize.

The party’s weakness has left the Jones campaign without some of the resources candidates in other states can take for granted.

“There’s just no data in the database,” said Daniel Deriso, the former operations and field director for the campaign for Randall Woodfin, the mayor-elect of Birmingham. “They had to build it all from the ground up.”

Others here, like State Representative Anthony Daniels, blame national Democrats for treating Alabama like “flyover country,” and they have been working to build infrastructure and capitalize on emerging progressive currents on their own.

“Doug Jones should be up by 20 points,” Mr. Daniels said. “Until the Democratic Party nationally starts looking at the South, and focusing on rebuilding the South, then they’re going to see a blood bath in places they may feel are competitive, like right now.”

Mr. Jones’s campaign is trying to compete in other places where Democrats do not typically make a strong showing, like Anniston, a city of 22,000 in the eastern part of the state where the campaign opened an office last week.

Sebastian Kitchen, a spokesman for the campaign, said it had developed the most robust get-out-the-vote effort in recent memory and had volunteers fanning out across the state.

“I don’t know what will happen,” said Cyndy Porter, 70, an independent voter who had never canvassed for a candidate before she went out for Mr. Jones there this weekend, “but we’re trying.”

Back in Helena, some of the Democrats were glad to at least be in the game this time.

“This is a backyard fight,” said Jerry McDonald, 67, one of the canvassers. “This is Alabama versus Auburn. Pick your side, we’re slugging it out.”
-NY TIMES, November 19, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/us/jones-alabama-democrats.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news