Roy Moore, who was the Republican nominee in 2017’s Alabama Senate election but lost after being accused of sexual misconduct, announced Thursday that he will run again in 2020.
“Yes, I will run for the United States Senate in 2020,” Moore said. “Can I win? Yes, I can win.”
The former chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court was accused during his 2017 campaign of touching and making sexual advances toward teenage girls, including a 14-year-old, in the 1980s, when he was in his 30s. The judge, who lost the election in deep-red Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones, has called the allegations a “smear campaign.”
President Trump, who won 62 percent of the vote in Alabama in 2016 and backed Moore’s campaign in 2017, has warned Moore, 72, against another Senate bid.
“I have NOTHING against Roy Moore, and unlike many other Republican leaders, wanted him to win,” Trump wrote on Twitter last month. “Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating.”
Moore suggested the president was being influenced by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“I think he’s being pushed by the NRSC. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I can’t speak for him. But I can say I don’t disagree with him in lots of his policies,” Moore said.
Moore has a 34 percent approval rating and a 29 percent unfavorable rating among Alabam voters, according to Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy’s April survey.