Exclusive — Poll: McConnell-Backed Candidate Slumps in Alabama as Pro-Trump Mo Brooks

Exclusive — Poll: McConnell-Backed Candidate Slumps in Alabama as Pro-Trump Mo Brooks Surges in Final Days

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Drew Angerer/Getty Images

by MATTHEW BOYLE
7 Aug 2017Washington, D.C.

About a week out from the all-important GOP primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Washington, DC, establishment candidate is slumping as two pro-President Trump conservatives surge. A new poll provided exclusively to Breitbart News by JMC Analytics, a Louisiana-based polling firm, shows Luther Strange tapering off in the polls as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) surges behind him and former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore remains steady in first place.

The poll shows Moore at 30 percent, Strange at 22 percent, and Brooks at 19 percent. Others combine for a total of 12 percent, while 17 percent are undecided. The poll of 500 Alabamians likely to vote in next Tuesday’s primary was conducted from August 5 to August 6—during the weekend—with a 95 percent confidence interval and a margin of error of 4.4 percent. Assuming these numbers are accurate, they show Brooks surging behind Strange inside the margin of error in the final days—a silent majority similar to the one that elected President Donald Trump—while Moore maintains a solid lead at the top.

Alabama Senate Republican Executive Summary Release by Breitbart News on Scribd

The top-two vote-getters in next Tuesday’s primary will head to a runoff in September, and if Alabamians send Strange—who was appointed into the seat under questionable circumstances—packing, it would send a major message to Washington, DC. The GOP establishment, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has aligned behind Strange, running millions of dollars of falsified attack ads inaccurately accusing Brooks of being anti-Trump. The attack ads have backfired, poll shows.

Both Brooks and Moore have condemned the phony ads from the Senate Leadership Fund in Alabama, which is run by anti-Trump Karl Rove acolyte Steven Law. Brooks was a supporter of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the GOP primary for president, but then strongly backed Trump in the general election.

Most Trump supporters see through Strange’s inaccurate attacks, funded by special interests in Washington, as Trump’s top campaign official in Alabama has joined the Brooks campaign, and most of Trump’s national supporters, from Women for Trump to Laura Ingraham to Sean Hannity to Ann Coulter to Mark Levin have endorsed Brooks.

Moore is a strong conservative in the race and also backs the president. Conservatives believe that a runoff between Moore and Brooks would send a strong signal to Washington, DC, and to the failed GOP leadership in the U.S. Congress that it is time to back President Trump and his agenda. It would also set a national precedent that the failures of the GOP establishment in Washington, led by McConnell—including but certainly not limited to the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare—are not electorally popular and cannot win elections. To win elections, in other words, Republicans would need to deliver the results on the matters on which Trump campaigned.

What’s more, as pollster John Couvillon told Breitbart News when providing the poll, it would show that despite the incumbency he was provided when appointed into Sessions’ seat and the millions of dollars spent on his behalf, Strange’s lack of support of the Trump agenda has made it hard for him to connect to voters in Alabama.

“Despite his incumbency and up to $8 million dollars being spent on his behalf (appointed) Senator Luther Strange is struggling to connect with GOP primary voters in Alabama,” Couvillon said in an email.

In the JMC poll’s analysis page, there is a key quote that further explains it all:

In summary, former Chief Justice Roy Moore appears to be a cinch for the September 26 runoff, while the other runoff slot is a close race between appointed incumbent Luther Strange (who is being hurt by the perceived connection to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) and Congressman “Mo” Brooks.

Strange, the former attorney general of Alabama, was appointed to the Sessions seat in the U.S. Senate when the former senator was confirmed as the Attorney General of the United States in President Trump’s administration. Curiously, however, Strange was conducting an investigation into then-Gov. Robert Bentley over a scandal that later forced Bentley’s resignation. Bentley resigned after appointing Strange to the seat. The circumstances of Strange’s appointment—along with his deep connections to McConnell and the very anti-Trump Rove, whose acolyte is running the Senate Leadership Fund funding the attack ads—are murky at best. But, as Couvillon told Breitbart News, the fabricated incumbency and the millions of dollars in attack ads are not working.

Brooks is surging, just like Trump did in the final week or so before each of his electoral wins in the primary and general elections. And if Brooks gets into the runoff with Moore, as now appears possible, it is a huge win for conservatives. Alabama’s race is about to get a lot hotter in the final analysis.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...es-final-days/

GOP ESTABLISHMENT'S NIGHTMARE: SEN. ROY MOORE?

Conservative Alabama icon poised for runoff for Sessions' Senate seat

Published: 7 days ago
BOB UNRUH A

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Roy Moore

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has had trouble pulling his GOP ranks together for almost any issue lately.

True, the senators did approve Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court, but on Obamacare and a number of other issues they’ve had difficulty reaching unanimity.

It’s partly because McConnell is working with moderates such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who last week torpedoed an effort to repeal Obamacare, and with conservatives such as Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, who press for less government and lower taxes.

So imagine adding to that mix a senator who’s been a state Supreme Court chief justice, who describes Islam as a “false religion,” who insists marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and declares America is a nation that owes its founding and survival to Almighty God.

That’s a very real possibility because among the nine candidates for the GOP nomination to replace Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, is former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

He’s the judge who was pushed out of the state Supreme Court 15 years ago after he installed a monument to the Ten Commandments, the foundation of American law, at the state judicial building.
A decade later, voters put him back in the same job.

Then, he was removed again for defending the state’s law establishing traditional marriage, even though technically he likely didn’t do anything wrong and was the victim of a campaign by his enemies, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And now, despite the millions of dollars being spent by Sen. Luther Strange, a former state official appointed to replace Sessions until the election, and his own spending of a mere $100,000, he’s in a statistical dead heat.

Significantly, it’s the Alabama voters who will decide, not the power brokers in Washington, who are supporting Strange. It is lesser-known, and much more conservative groups such as the Alabama Republican Assembly that have endorsed Moore.

That group’s statement said Moore is “a proven fighter, personally and politically, and will stand strong for government that abides by the Constitution.”

“I believe Judge Moore will stand like a stone wall against the tide of liberalism and immorality we see on display in the news each day,” said ALRA President Jennifer Montrose.

There are nine candidates for the nomination, but Strange recently was polled at 35 percent, Moore at 33 percent and Rep. Mo Brooks at 16 percent by the Raycom News Network and Strategy Research. Others were far behind.

If no one gets more than 50 percent in the Aug. 15 election, there will be a runoff between the top two, something for which Moore already is planning.

The eventual outcome in the general election probably won’t be a surprise, since some two-thirds of registered voters are Republicans.

Strange also is linked to former Gov. Robert Bentley, who appointed him to finish Sessions’ term. Bentley, shortly later, resigned from office at the start of an impeachment hearing. When Bentley appointed Strange to the Senate, Bentley was under investigation by Strange’s office as state attorney general.

A Politio report Monday said McConnell was “unleashing the full force of his political machine” against conservatives in Alabama.

“The Republican leader is aiming to thwart Rep. Mo Brooks and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in a special election in Alabama [Aug. 15],” the report said.
“His super PAC is set to spend as much as $8 million to boost his favored candidate,” it continued.

His all-out effort “underscores his struggles managing his narrow Senate majority,” the report said.

Moore has publicly acknowledged his differences with the Washington establishment.

“If Mitch McConnell is accusing me of being a ‘conservative rebel’ who won’t march in lockstep behind his Big Government, big-spending agenda,” Moore said, “then I plead guilty as charged!”
His website details his positions.

• “Lower taxes, smaller government, and less spending”
• On the Constitution, “All actions of state and federal officials must conform”
• On immigration, “If a wall is our only option, then we should build it immediately.”
• On health care, “We do not need socialized medicine”
• For the military, more funding and “homosexuality should be against military policy as was the law prior to Bill Clinton.”
• And, there is “no authority for federal involvement” in educational systems in states.

WND reported in May Republicans were lining up behind Strange.

At the time, Moore told WND: “I think I can take the values of this state and my particular qualifications to the Senate to help us get this country back to what it should be. I have had a lot of study in the Constitution of the United States. I understand its meaning, and I understand how far away we’ve drifted from that document. Underlying all of this is virtue and morality, which comes from God, and we’re trying to deny that God upon which our morality is founded.”

Listen to the interview: At the link.

He warned that Washington won’t be able to control Alabama voters.

“Trying to control the people of Alabama just doesn’t work, and it’s futile to do so. They know better than to be controlled by people in Washington, D.C. They see me as an outsider. I recognize I’m not an insider to Washington, D.C.”

http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/gop-estab...sen-roy-moore/