Doug Jones Alludes To Roy Moore Sexual Misconduct Scandal In New Ad
Alabama Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones is out with two new TV ads featuring Republicans who are voting for him over GOP nominee Roy Moore, with one spot alluding to Moore’s sexual misconduct scandal.
Five women have now said that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was an adult. On Monday, Beverly Young Nelson stepped forward and said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old.
“I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch,” she said in a press conference.
Jones has not aggressively attacked Moore about the scandal. In general, Democrats have been sitting back while Republicans say whether they think Moore should stay in the race and whether they believe his accusers.
The Jones ad doesn’t directly address the Moore scandal, but does seem to reference The Washington Post story breaking the news about the first four accusers.
“He’s already been removed from office twice,” one Republican in the ad says. “This time it’s even worse,” says another. “You read the story and it just shakes you,” adds the third.
The second Jones ad, which is also running statewide, features a man who says he is a lifelong Republican but is now going to vote for Jones in the Dec. 12 special election.
“I’m urging all Republicans, if they will, to take a look a Doug. There’s no way we can vote for Roy Moore. There’s no way in the world that we can have that kind of representation on our Senate. We need a guy that can bring unity to this state, as well as the nation. Doug Jones is that,” he says.
So far, Moore has not run any TV ads, while Jones has been on the air with several mainly positive biographical spots stressing his background as a U.S. attorney going after the Ku Klux Klan and his desire to work across party lines.
Jones supporters are hoping that Republicans who are disgusted with Moore will cross party lines and vote for the Democrat ― or, at the very least, stay home on Election Day.
In September, Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) for his party’s nomination to fill the seat that Jeff Sessions vacated when he became attorney general. The GOP establishment backed Strange, while President Donald Trump’s former adviser, Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon, supported Moore.
Moore was controversial long before the most recent scandal. As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he vehemently opposed marriage equality and was twice removed from the job for flouting the law.
Moore has said his accuser’s allegations are absolutely false, although he has admitted that he “dated a lot of young ladies.”
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
