Alabama's largest newspaper calls on voters to 'reject Roy Moore'

With special election looming, Birmingham News editorial calls sexual assault allegations against candidate ‘a turning point for women in Alabama’

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Alabama’s biggest newspaper on Sunday urged voters to “Stand for decency, reject Roy Moore” in an editorial about the controversial Republican Senate candidate whose campaign has been engulfed by sexual assault allegations.

As Republican senator Susan Collins said she hoped voters would “choose not to elect him”, the Birmingham News went to press with an editorial saying the election was a “turning point for women in Alabama” and described the allegations as “horrifying, but not shocking”.

The editorial said the looming special election on 12 December – held to fill the vacancy in the Senate left by the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions – was a chance for women to “make their voices heard in a state that has silenced them for too long”.

It comes after a series of allegations against Moore – including that he abused a 14-year-old girl when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney – has led Republican central command to ostracise him.

The Birmingham News, which endorsed the Democratic candidate Doug Jones, said that the Alabama Republican establishment had, in contrast, “chosen to stand by him, attacking and belittling the brave women who have come forward”.

Moore, a former judge, denies any misconduct.

Senator Collins, of Maine, told CNN’s State of the Union that she had opposed Moore before the scandal, which began when the Washington Post reported on Leigh Corfman who said that, when she was 14 in 1979, Moore kissed and touched her and made her touch his genitals.

Collins said: “I was concerned about his performance as a member of the Alabama supreme court when he had been removed twice for failing to follow lawful order and also because of his comments on Muslims and LGBT individuals.

“So these allegations are extremely disturbing. But under the constitution, the … [rules] on whether or not you seat someone is whether they satisfy the age and residency requirements. So we would have to seat him, but I hope we don’t get there. I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. And I hope that the voters of Alabama choose not to elect him.”

She added that she did not find his denials convincing.

“The allegations are stronger than the denial,” Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said on Fox News Sunday. “Roy Moore should find something else to do.”

Scott said that it would be “in the best interest of the country, as well as the state of Alabama”, for Moore to step aside, something the candidate’s wife said at a rally on Friday that her husband would not do.

Moore has said the allegations that he systematically pursued relationships with teenage girls was an effort from the Senate’s Republican leadership to undermine him.

“This has nothing to do with establishment Republicans or politics, it has to do with the character that we want displayed in the United States of America, and especially in our leadership realm,” Scott told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.

Donald Trump has said little about the allegations against Moore, but has attacked Democrat senator Al Franken, who has apologised for kissing and groping a TV news anchor Leeann Tweeden in 2006.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said on Friday that the difference between allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump and Al Franken was that “Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the president hasn’t.”

Trump has long insisted that all of the at least 16 women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct are lying, a position Sanders repeated from the White House podium on Friday. She was also asked why Trump had not fulfilled his promise during the campaign to sue all of his accusers. Sanders said: “I’ll have to ask him and let you know.”