As an Alabama native who has lived in the north for a long time, but whose family remains firmly entrenched there, I watched with special interest the recent Senate election. I know the cast of characters well. I have followed Roy Moore’s interesting and controversial career for years, and my uncle was an FBI agent in Birmingham who helped, finally, to acquire the evidence leading, eventually, to the conviction of the men who bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1968 — the case that Doug Jones ultimately prosecuted. The results of the election, with Jones’ narrow victory, may be a turning point for the state, a decision that finally looks forward rather than backward. But it was a very narrow victory; the results could easily have been different if write-in voters had all voted for Moore.
It is a mistake, I think, to see the election results as a repudiation of President Donald Trump in a state where he won one of his largest majorities. Rather, Moore was a very flawed candidate. He had previously lost a bid for governor. He had been twice removed by Alabama judicial authorities from his position as chief justice of the state Supreme Court. The sexual allegations that came to the fore were simply one additional factor in his defeat. The question is, given those facts, how did he almost win?
The answer to that is complex. When I was growing up in Alabama, it was a single-party state. There were no Republicans. (Remember, George Wallace was a Democrat.) There was usually not even a Republican primary, because no one would run. But all that changed in the 1960s and ’70s, just as Lyndon Johnson said it would. The modern Republican conservative movement (Goldwater-Nixon-Reagan) cast its future with the South — and, in particular, with white southerners.
Several of Alabama’s recent long-serving senators — including its present senior senator, Richard Shelby, were elected as Democrats, but then became Republicans. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which began the long, violent process of enfranchising black voters was — and to a great extent continues to be — thwarted by state-imposed obstacles. Now, in Alabama and other southern states, the Republican Party commands the allegiance of a vast majority of white voters. Even southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton could not buck this trend. Statistics from the recent election indicate that a majority of white voters supported Moore, because he was a Republican. But a minority of white voters joined with the great majority of black voters who, despite many obstacles, have finally become a significant force. They comprised 30 percent of Tuesday’s electorate. Their votes made the difference.
Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have said that the Voting Rights Act, which he championed, meant that Democrats would lose the South for a generation. It has been a generation. Maybe things are changing in Alabama for the better. I hope so. But make no mistake — the results are chiefly a repudiation of Roy Moore — not a repudiation of Donald Trump, or of the Republican Party.
Richard Crocker, retired dean of Dartmouth’s Tucker Foundation and college chaplain, lives in Lebanon.