Equality Voters strike back in Alabama
On Tuesday night, Alabama voters served up a stunning rebuke of Roy Moore that marked a watershed moment in our political history. As the nation looked on, tens of thousands of voters turned out — many for the first time in their lives — to reject Roy Moore’s brand of bigotry, defend the women he attacked, and fight back against blatant efforts to suppress their votes.
Moore’s defeat comes at a particularly crucial moment. A little more than one year after the voters of North Carolina ousted former Republican Governor Pat McCrory in the wake of his notorious HB2 law — in a state Trump carried by nearly four points, no less — Moore’s defeat has become another cautionary tale about the political consequences of peddling hate in a cynical effort to drum up votes.
Long before we knew that Moore was a serial predator who abused his power to prey on young girls, we knew he was a bigot who abused his authority to attack LGBTQ people for political gain. He advocated for the criminalization of LGBTQ people, attempted to block marriage equality as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and tried to block a lesbian mother’s custody rights.
But that’s not all. Roy Moore also advocated banning Muslims from serving in Congress, said we didn’t need Constitutional amendments that granted African-Americans and women the right to vote, and likened his values to those of Vladimir Putin — whose brutality against the LGBTQ community, journalists, and political adversaries is well known.
There are some who flocked to Moore because of his hateful views, including Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. But for the majority of fair-minded Alabamians — including, remarkably, nearly every African-American voter who cast a ballot — Moore was simply too much to stomach. And now, for the first time in more than 20 years, in a state that Donald Trump carried by more than 27 points in 2016, a pro-equality Democrat will represent Alabama in the United States Senate.
Doug Jones was a strong candidate who ran a great campaign. Still, as he acknowledged on Tuesday night, his victory would not have been possible without the unprecedented, grassroots resistance of thousands of Alabama voters who chose a candidate who would represent them rather than divide them.
In 2014, HRC opened offices in Alabama because it was the front line of the fight for equality. And we believed — as we still do — that an LGBTQ American should have the same fundamental rights and protections as anyone else, whether they live in Birmingham or New York City. Since then, we’ve organized to oust Roy Moore from the Alabama Supreme Court after he refused to implement the nationwide marriage equality ruling. We’ve seen Birmingham pass a citywide comprehensive nondiscrimination law. We’ve seen the community come alive and organize. And in this race, we identified 200,000 Equality Voters — allies included — who added strength to the 60,000-strong LGBTQ voting bloc we worked to turn out across the state.
Now, in the wake of Tuesday’s victory, it’s time to build on these lessons and double down on our progress. As we turn the corner into 2018, I fully believe that if we can win in Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia — we can win anywhere.
Nationally, HRC has already hit the ground in more than a dozen states, and we’ve identified more than 52 million “Equality Voters” who are deeply motivated to vote on key civil rights issues. We’ve also launched the largest grassroots expansion in our nearly 40-year history to effectively mobilize them. Because in 2018 it won’t be enough that we won in Alabama. We’ve got to pull the emergency brake on Donald Trump and Mike Pence by sending a loud message to all the other Roy Moore wannabes around the country: If you come for us, we’ll come for you on Election Day.
