The NPR Politics Podcast - Race Tight On Eve Of Election In Alabama

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

After weeks of intense national attention, the special election in Alabama is here. Voters go to the polls tomorrow to decide whether Republican Roy Moore or Democrat Doug Jones will be their next senator. And the race is too close to call. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, political editor Domenico Montanaro and national correspondent Debbie Elliott in Alabama. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Scott Detrow. And I'm Tamara Keith. And before we get to the show, we just want to let you know that we are doing a live show here in D.C. in January. It's at the Warner Theater and it's called President Trump One Year In. If you're in town, if you're nearby, we'd love for you to join us. You'll want to be indoors in January watching us do our live podcast. It's true.

Last time we did it, it was a nice, warm, cozy environment. Great time. And what could possibly be a better holiday gift than hanging out with us? You can learn more and get tickets at nprpresents.org. That's nprpresents, all one word, dot org. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll all be there. We'd love for you to be there, too. Hey, y'all. This is Ellen in Mobile, Alabama, where I'm in front of one of the many billboards reading Vote Tuesday, December 12th. This podcast was recorded at 1.35 on Monday, Election Eve for Alabama voters. It's December 11th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, the NPR One app, or on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. That special election in Alabama is finally here. Tomorrow is election day in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in 25 years. Polls show, well, we'll get to what the polls show, but let's just say that no one really has a good sense who's going to be winning this one. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Debbie Elliott, national correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Hey, Debbie, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you. Glad to be with you. How long, for listeners, how long have you been reporting on Alabama and reporting on these characters, Doug Jones and Roy Moore? Well, I have been reporting in Alabama for more than 30 years, which must mean I started as a child, but I have been covering these characters for a long time. Roy Moore, I first covered in the 1990s when he was a local judge in Gadsden, Alabama, and had come under some scrutiny for hanging a Ten Commandments plaque, a handmade plaque on the wall, and for opening his courtroom in prayer. He faced some lawsuits, and that's when I first started speaking with him about his vision for America, that somehow other people were misinterpreting the Constitution and that

he was put in these elected positions to return the idea of God to government. Did you ever think this might be someone who will be a senator one day? I don't know that I ever thought that, but I knew that he had higher political aspirations. It was very clear. And of course, his career has taken many twists and turns since then. We'll talk about that in a little bit. What about Doug Jones? When did you first encounter Doug Jones? And what was he like before he was, you know, the Democrat who might somehow win Alabama that we've been talking about the last few months? Well, Doug Jones, I first met

also back in the late 1990s. He was a U.S. attorney in Birmingham. He was appointed by Bill Clinton, but he had opened up the old church bombing case in Birmingham from the 1960s. Four black girls were killed by Ku Klux Klansmen in Birmingham at 16th Street Baptist Church. Only one of them had been convicted over the years. And Doug Jones reopened those cases and had trials and won convictions for two of the Klansmen. So that's sort of his big claim to fame. And that's when I first started speaking with him. So here we are the day before this election finally happens after all this attention, all this money, all this polling. Debbie, which to you

is more remarkable, that Roy Moore could win a U.S. Senate race given the allegations against him, or that Doug Jones could win as a Democrat in Alabama? I think both are remarkable. You know, Alabama has become this state where Republicans win with double digits pretty regularly. There is no Democrat in statewide office here. So just the fact that we are talking about a Democrat having a shot is pretty remarkable. That said, it's also remarkable that you have national Republicans, even some state Republicans, saying, I don't think I can vote for Roy Moore, yet rank and file Republican voters are saying, you know, I don't believe these allegations or I can in his 30s, solicited sexual encounters, had sexual encounters with teenage and underage girls. Even before that, this race was getting outsized national attention.

Why was that? lots of attention for some of the bombastic comments that he'd made, whether it came from the fact that he had put the Monument of the Ten Commandments up while he was a Supreme Court justice, when he was the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Alabama, or when he, you know, has made some of the comments that he's made about people who are gay in this country, which is why you see this sort of dichotomy for him where you have evangelicals who are very supportive of him and really buoyed his candidacy and been behind him for a long time and trying to balance that with morality and the fact that he's had all these women accuse him of sexual misconduct and even assault and many of them when they were teenagers. So I'm thinking of the best way to characterize how national Republicans have viewed this race. And I'm pausing because it's a little complicated. Senate Republicans, by and large, back Luther Strange over Roy Moore in the primary. They wanted Strange, the appointed incumbent, to win that seat. He lost to Moore. So they were not in love with Roy Moore as a candidate to begin with, but they came around saying, all right, he's not our guy, but he's the nominee. We'll back him. Then these accusations come out and you see a massive distancing, denunciation of Roy Moore by Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, including Cory Gardner, who runs Republican Senate campaigns next year, saying, we don't want this guy in the Senate. If he comes to the Senate, we're going to investigate him. We would love anybody to step up as a write-in candidate.

Of course, no write-in candidate emerges, and here they are. Now, Debbie, there's another relevant Republican to all of this on the national level, and that, of course, is President Trump. How would you describe President Trump's relationship with Roy Moore as a candidate over the last couple weeks? Well, it's changed a little bit, right? So in the primary, Donald Trump was behind Luther Strange, even came to the state of Alabama to campaign for Luther Strange. And then when Luther Strange lost, the president erased all of his tweets that he had sent out supporting Luther Strange. But then he all of a sudden became maybe a reluctant Moore supporter. But here in the last week, when it's become clear how close this race is,

the president has become more vocal and actually has endorsed Moore. He made an appearance in Pensacola on Friday night, which of course is in Florida, but it's in the panhandle and it's right along the Alabama border. It's very close to where I live. I'm in that television market. So are all the people who live in Mobile, Alabama. And a lot of people from Alabama went to Pensacola to be in the audience, to hear Trump speak. And he was very clear about this race during that speech. And we want jobs, jobs, jobs. So get out and vote for Roy Moore. In Domenico, Trump has been pretty dismissive of the accusations against Moore. The White House put out the statement initially saying, if the accusations are true, Moore should drop out. But every public statement from Trump has

been pretty dismissive of the accusations and supportive of Moore. Yeah, the White House initially started off with sort of doing this dance of trying to say, well, you know, if these allegations are true, then certainly Moore should step aside. But then often what happens and what we saw happen again was President Trump decided to step all over that line and say, you know, forget it. Why are we being mealy mouthed about this? The fact is, sure, do we have to believe these women? Sure. But do we also have to believe Roy Moore? He denies it vehemently. He strongly denies it. And it's hard not to sort of project onto Roy Moore a lot of how President Trump ran his campaign and his candidacy in 2016, when he vehemently denied the allegations for more than a dozen women that he had sexually harassed them or was guilty of

some sort of assault or misconduct. And you see those women now even coming forward, wanting to shine the spotlight on President Trump. So you have this big divide between the President and Senate Republicans who have not come back to Roy Moore. Here's what Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said he did with his ballot. I'd rather see the Republican win, but I hope that Republican would be a write in. I couldn't vote for Roy Moore. I didn't vote for Roy Moore, but I wrote in a distinguished Republican name. And I think a lot of people could do that. Will they do it? I'm not sure. So, Debbie, that's the stuff that we've been focusing on in the podcast the last few weeks.

You've been reporting at campaign events, talking to a lot of Alabama voters. How are the voters, the people who actually matter tomorrow, how are they making sense of all of this? So you've got the people who are behind Roy Moore are really mad at national Republicans right now and how they have been treating this race and what they've been saying. And you have to remember, Alabamians are a group that really don't like the federal government telling them what to do. They don't like the sense that people are somehow looking down on them for their politics. You know, the state motto here is we dare defend our rights. And, you know, you can look at the state's long history, there have

been points in history where Alabama has been up against the federal government, you think about George Wallace and his defiant stance against desegregation, for instance. So there's this sense that, oh, gosh, here come the national media, and here come the national Republicans, and they're somehow trying to tell us what to do. And that does not sit well with people. I spoke to a retired Army colonel at a recent event in Fairhope for Roy Moore. And Colonel Brock Wells told me, he now lives in Foley, Alabama, that he is going to vote for Roy Moore. He doesn't dismiss the allegations, but he says, we need to know more. There needs to be more information about that.

And at this point, the man is innocent until this is all proven out. And in the meantime, I think I need to vote for somebody who's going to support the Trump agenda. And I think that that is Roy Moore. And when I ask him about, well, Richard Shelby and other Republicans are now saying, you know, that they're trying to distance themselves from Moore and that he won't be good for the party in the Senate. And here's what he said. Here is his response. Senator Moore will go up there and he will not let them forget that. That to me, his election will drive a saber right through their gut. And that's what I'm after. I'm an old army guy and I believe in saying it

like it is, you know. So he's basically saying they've abandoned more. I hope more goes up there and make some pay. So, you know, to me, there's two keys to this election. And Debbie, I wonder if you could weigh in on this. But, you know, you have this one piece of this, which we've been talking about, which are these Republicans and whether or not they stay home, because it's hard to see a lot of Republicans who voted Republican for a really long time suddenly switching and voting for Doug Jones. That's probably not going to happen. There may be some people who do that, but not many. It's more like Richard Shelby, who said, you know, I can't vote for Roy Moore. I'm going to write in a very well-regarded Republican.

Which, by the way, do we have any idea who that guy was? Who is his distinguished Republican? I don't know. I wonder. We don't know. I have a guess. Do you think it's Nick Saban? Roll tide.

It could be Nick Saban. But I guess it's Bob Riley, the former governor here. But I don't we have no idea. He said he's not going to say until the whole thing is Roll Tide. There you go. Okay. The Alabama football team, which has won several national championships. And it's all about Alabama, right? I mean, king of Alabama. In fairness, because I know more Auburn fans, I should point out they did lose to Auburn this year. But anyway.

They did. They did. And that's its own- Don't hang up on us, Debbie. That is its own podcast. But I have one remark. Yes, Auburn beat us. But who's in the national championship hunt at the moment?

Thank you very much. A good counterpoint. I'm just here to lay out both sides of that. So anyway, yes. So depending on whether or not there are enough Republicans who will go and write in X person, X distinguished Republican, or stay home is one big piece of this. The other big piece of this is black voters. You know, you mentioned Doug Jones and the church bombing case. Twenty eight percent of Alabama is African Americans. So which of those two sort of way out is Doug Jones getting enough black support? And will there be enough Republicans who stay home that could elevate Jones? That is the question. You know, in the question about black voters,

there was a lot of work being done to reach out to African Americans. I happened to be in Mississippi over the weekend covering the president's appearance at a civil rights event. And on my drive back coming through Alabama, I was listening to the radio and kind of scanning around. And on some of the urban radio stations, there were ads every single break for Doug Jones, coming from all kinds of groups. So there's a real push for African Americans to get out and vote. But I also spent a little time in Tuskegee, Alabama, where Doug Jones was campaigning a week or so ago. And some people were engaged, but they were the politicos, right? The people who were active in local party politics. If I got outside of that group and just talked to average

people on the streets or on the campus of Tuskegee University, people were like, well, I don't know, I haven't really clued in yet. I'm not sure if I'm voting. You know, there was not the kind of enthusiasm that he's going to need on Tuesday. But there is this sense that Doug Jones has done something for that electorate. And if that message can get out, that's going to work. Here's what Elaine Harrington told me in Tuskegee. She said, you know, Doug Jones' record of prosecuting those church bombers, that carries weight. When he prosecuted the KKK, when they bombed that church in Birmingham, Alabama, that's strong on crime. The president has it all mixed up. Of course, referring to two different groups like that? What he's tried to do is say, I'm going to talk about what he calls them kitchen table issues, the economy and jobs and health care and things that all people talk about.

But it's been hard for him to stay on that message, clearly. Now, it looks like he's having a little bit of success, in particular with suburban women. I spoke with one woman in Birmingham who is an attorney who has been a Republican, she said, since she first voted for Ronald Reagan. She voted for every single Republican president since then, including President Trump. Her name is Andrea Powers. And she says she cannot vote for Roy Moore. And she's really troubled when she hears her fellow Republicans defending him and saying that they will vote for him regardless. Here's what she says. And if they're voting for him and disregarding these claims

of abuse of young ladies, they're choosing to vote for a pedophile over voting for a Democrat. And as a Republican, that is repugnant to me, as an American it is. So he's going to have to really reach more people like that and hope that they come and vote and not just write in somebody else. So the question is, what will tomorrow's results look like? We will dig into that very complicated question in a moment. We're going to take a quick break first. Support for NPR and the following message come from Doctors Without Borders, an independent, rapid response medical humanitarian organization with teams in more than 70 countries. Doctors Without Borders teams provide medical care to those who need it most,

such as Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar, Syrian civilians maimed in the ongoing civil war, and those afflicted by the cholera outbreak in Nigeria. Learn more at DoctorsWithoutBorders.org forward slash NPR politics. Hey, this is Scott Detrow. And I'm Tamara Keith. And think about this. Think about how many words and phrases you have learned on the Politics Podcast this year. Things like emoluments and the reconciliation process. Reconciliation, something we have talked about a lot and something that I anticipate we'll be talking about a lot more in the days and weeks and months to come.

And not only that, we're going to be talking about things you have never heard of, I have never heard of, and Tam has never heard of. But when they happen and when they're newsy and when they're relevant, we will figure it out and we will explain it to you because that is what we do every week on the NPR Politics Podcast. You know, we learn as we go. Like, Scott and I are learning from all of our wonderful colleagues who are part of the NPR Politics Pod Squad. But in order to do all of this, we do need your help. And that's why we've been asking for your support. So if you've not made a contribution yet, we're asking you to take a moment, think about how much you've relied on this podcast and think about the fact that we rely on you to

keep it going. So that's why we're asking you to go to donate.npr.org slash politics and make a contribution. And that hooks you up with your local public radio station and tells them that we sent you. And once you've given, go shout it from the rooftops on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag WhyPublicRadio. Thanks. Now back to the show. All right, we are back. Domenico, Debbie, I'm going to read some stuff to you.

And I just want your reaction to it. All right, ready? Ready. Domenico, Debbie, I'm going to read some stuff to you, and I just want your reaction to it. All right, ready? Ready. Fox News, Jones plus 10. Emerson, more plus 9. Trafalgar Group, more plus 5. Gravis, more plus 4. WBRC, more plus 7.

CBS News, more plus 6. Washington Post, Jones plus 3. These are all polls that have come out over the last couple weeks. They all sound wildly different. Domenico. My reaction? Yes. Wait, wait, wait.

Oh, I missed. Listeners, Domenico missed his shot. I missed. Yeah, it would have been good to recycle that. Who cares, right? There's like hours left in this race. There's absolutely no reason to be talking about polling. Like people. I know we're an impatient society. People want to know what they think they're going to know.

We didn't know what was going to happen in the 2016 election. We're not going to necessarily know what's going to happen tomorrow. The fundamentals of this race are what they are. President Trump won this state by a lot. There's a lot of Republican voters here. Now, there are some mitigating factors for why Doug Jones obviously has the potential to do pretty well tomorrow. All those poll numbers, they're all over the place. They're within 10 points in most of them. There are some good polling outfits, but frankly, Alabama is a pretty darn tough place to poll because there aren't a lot of competitive races in Alabama. So because the fact that Alabama is not someplace where you've got a lot of polling done, this is going to be great data for a lot of political scientists. Doesn't mean much of a hill of beans for the rest of us who are trying to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow. Debbie, before I ask you a similar question, I'm going to give Domenico another chance to make that shot because I do know you're a pretty good basketball player.

But it's winter and I'm like all layered up here and it's not the easiest thing, but here we go. Let's go it again. Sure, it's the sweater. That's in. No problem. Hey, that one was in, so I had to get the follow through. Great little metaphor for the polls right there. You missed the first shot, you made the second. Missed the first, make the second, yeah. So Debbie, you have covered Alabama politics

a long time. You've covered politics in general a long time. What is your sense in terms of reading these polls, talking to the voters you're talking to, seeing these campaigns up close? What do you think is likely to happen tomorrow? I have no earthly idea. And that's just, I mean, really, it's so remarkable to me. I usually have a little bit of a political gut. You know, I can kind of tell after hanging out with a candidate and watching them campaign, if they look like they're winning or losing. And I cannot tell you, I have no sense of this. And I feel like it's all going to come down to who turns out and votes. I will give you one little anecdote. If you drive around the state,

and I've been, you know, on back roads and through little communities and things, it's really interesting the places where I have seen Doug Jones signs, places I would not normally see them. Very conservative zip codes. So he's reaching some people that I think have not at all been within the Democratic fold for a really, really long time, since Howell Heflin served in the U.S. Senate for Alabama. So I cannot wait to get and look at the precinct level and see what happened. I'm just so curious. To me, Debbie's sign test is a far more accurate thing to be looking at than the polls because rural-urban divide plays out all across the country. It even played out internationally when we talked about Brexit and other things like that.

So, you know, the sign test, the fact that there does seem to be some level of support in rural places for Doug Jones is a telling indicator. It just you have to see whether or not it rises all the way to make up as big a gap as Democrats have there. For instance, I've got like a neighbor who had a big Trump sign in their yard. And now a Doug Jones sign sits there. So I want to go back to the polls quickly because this is the case all the time. And we hashed into this a lot last year after the election. But it's always interesting and it's worth explaining. Survey Monkey had a really long article that got into how the results of a poll can look wildly different if you just

slightly tweak your assumptions of who is going to show up. The poll quote here, minor differences in the methods used to model or select the likely electorate produce wildly varying estimates in Alabama. Data collected over the past week with different models applied show everything between an eight percentage point margin favoring Jones and a 9 percentage point margin favoring Moore. Domenico, what is the boiled down explanation of what we're talking about when we're talking about using different models for a poll? It's a guess first of who are the voters in the state and then a likely voter model is who's going to show up. So if you then take likely voter model, what they're doing is they take enthusiasm, as well as the types of voters and numbers of voters of people who have turned out in years past. So Debbie, how many factors do we need to think about here? Because

you've got to begin with, it's a special election in the middle of December. Then you've got busy, people are not as engaged in special elections. Although I have to say that just all of the attention to this race sort of changes that whole dynamic a little bit, right? There is a lot of attention on this race. It was really low turnout in the primary and the runoff here, like 14% and 18%. The Secretary of State is expecting like 25% on Tuesday. So I don't know. So last question for both of you. Debbie, you wake up tomorrow morning. What are one or two factors you're going to be looking for over the course of the day before the results come in to give you a sense of how this could be going? I think who's voting? Where do we see heavy turnout? Do we see heavy turnout in Alabama's Black Belt region? That is kind of the little stretch over in West Alabama, named for the soil, not for the color of the people there, but they have incredible numbers of African American voters, places like Selma, Alabama, places like Tuskegee, Alabama. Are these voters going to be motivated? Are they going to show up? What

kind of turnout are you having at precincts there? I think also I'll be looking at like the urban areas, Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery. Those are places where Doug Jones could pick up a lot of support. Rural areas. Are they quiet or are they getting turnout? That will indicate, you know, support for Roy Moore. It's going to be very interesting. And I'm taking notes. OK. So, Domenico, no matter who wins tomorrow, if Roy Moore wins, if Doug Jones wins, this election does not go away. This will have ripple effects for national politics and what we'll be talking about for weeks on forward. Absolutely. I mean, this race has huge implications and huge stakes.

You know, a more win puts Republicans in a real pickle. You know, do they move to expel the senator that the voters from Alabama, the grassroots, just picked and possibly cause an uprising within the base? Do they let him stay and cede any potential claim to moral leadership on sexual harassment and assault. It's a really tough position for them. Are they ready to accept being the party of sexual harassment and assault? Think about that from a Republican leadership standpoint. That's what they're looking at. And he might just not vote for things that Mitch McConnell wants him to vote for, right?

Well, that's true. You never know because he's definitely going to be somebody who's very quotable, who people in the hallways like yourself are going to be able to put just run the tape, run the tape recorder. And he's going to be saying things that Republican leadership are going to have to defend or say that they disagree with, kind of like with President Trump, who's now in the White House. But Democrats are in danger of repeating 2016, running against Trump and right into that culture war lane. And that is what the conversation is for so many people here in Alabama, the Republicans who are sticking with Roy Moore. This is about the same sentiments that sent Donald Trump to the White House. And Roy Moore is trying to hit that. I want you guys to listen to this ad that he's running.

And I think this really sums it up very well. I'm Roy Moore, and I approve this message. The same Washington insiders who don't like President Trump are trying to stop our campaign. They just don't like conservatives like us. They call us warmongers for wanting to rebuild the military, racists for securing our borders, bigots for recognizing the sanctity of marriage, and they call us foolish for believing in God. They're afraid I'm going to take our Alabama values to Washington.

And I can't wait. So that's Moore, who we've been talking about a lot lately. Domenico, what about Doug Jones winning this race? What would that mean Wednesday morning? I mean, if Jones wins, think about it would send shockwaves through the political world. I mean, suddenly Democrats would see a narrow window open to possibly taking back the Senate next year, although very, very narrow, we should still say. But so would the difference in the Senate be very narrow? It would be 51-49. Absolutely. You know, and some Republicans would

privately, frankly, be breathing a sigh of relief. You know, the Senate wouldn't be needing to contemplate expulsion or worry about being painted as complicit. It would also give the anti-Moore, anti-Trump Republicans some ammunition to their warnings that the party needs to moderate even in tone or lose even in places like Alabama. I mean, it would indicate nowhere is safe. It would give Republicans what they hope is enough time months before those first 2018 primaries to pick candidates who can win. So think of this as not just a huge potential win for Democrats, but a big potential win for the establishment Republicans who can try to beat back this uprising within its own party. All right. Well, we'll know what happens tomorrow. You can follow the results at npr.org on your local public radio station. Debbie, you will be very busy. Thank you very much for coming and hanging out with us on the podcast.

It was fun. Thanks. All right. So that's a wrap for today. As we close the show, I want to circle back to what Tam and I were talking about earlier. Yes, one of the benefits of podcasts, as opposed to your local public radio station,

is that you do not have to hear us do pledge drives. I get that. But public radio is public because of you. Because listeners know how much they get from shows and reports and take the time to make a contribution, no matter how big or how small. So if you haven't done that yet at donate.npr.org slash politics, we're asking you right now to think about how much you listen to our show, how much all that news and analysis is worth to you,

and to give whatever amount is possible. That's donate.npr.org slash politics. And when you do, tell everyone why with the hashtag WhyPublicRadio. Thank you so much. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Debbie Elliott, national correspondent based in Alabama. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.