Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in March lost his bid to mount a political comeback after a poor showing in an Alabama Republican Party primary for a U.S. Senate seat.
Seven Republican candidates vied for the right to challenge U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who defeated Moore in a 2017 special election. In the March 3 primary, Moore came in fourth place, winning less than 7 percent of the vote.
The two top vote-getters, Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach at several universities, and former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, face a runoff election July 14.
Moore gained fame in 2001 after he installed a large Ten Commandments monument in the Judicial Building in Montgomery. Americans United and other groups successfully sued to have it removed. Moore defied the court ruling, an action that led to his removal from the bench.
Moore was re-elected to the state high court as chief justice in 2012, but was removed from the court again in 2016 after he instructed state judges to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling upholding marriage equality.
In 2017, Moore’s first bid for U.S. Senate was derailed after allegations of sexual misconduct were lodged against him. Some came from women who said Moore had assaulted them in the late 1970s and early ’80s when they were teenagers.
