Can Roy Moore Return?

Can Roy Moore return?

Sean Reilly and Eddie Curran, Press-Register (Mobile, Alabama), June 8, 2006

In the early 1980s, an obscure Gadsden lawyer, disheartened by his loss in a hard-fought local judicial race, took to the road to learn kickboxing in Texas and herd cattle in Australia. That footloose attorney was Roy Moore and, on another level, his travels were just beginning.

More than a decade later, his fame as the "Ten Commandments Judge" would catapult him to head of the state's highest court and national notoriety. After his crushing defeat to Gov. Bob Riley in Tuesday's Republican gubernatorial primary, Moore was coy about his future.

This time, however, analysts strongly question whether he will be able to reconstruct a political career.

"I think it's going to be very hard for him to come back and be a major force in Alabama politics because he clearly lost ground among Republican primary voters," said Merle Black, an authority on Southern politics at Emory University in Atlanta.

In part, Black said, that's because Moore alienated some core supporters three years ago through his defiance of a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. But Black also read Tuesday's returns -- in which Riley trounced Moore by a 2-1 margin -- as a sign that the Alabama Republican Party's growth is reducing the influence of small town and rural voters who are more inclined to support Moore.

Indeed, unofficial final returns show that turnout in Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial primary jumped 29 percent over four years ago. Much of the growth came from booming metro areas like Baldwin County, where Riley won by an almost 4-1 margin.

Out of 67 counties, Moore carried only 14, and several were in the rural Black Belt where Republican voters make up a tiny fraction of the electorate. Among those he lost was his home county of Etowah.

Like Moore, former Gov. Don Siegelman's political future is also in doubt, albeit in more ways than one. On trial facing federal corruption charges, Siegelman also lost badly in Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary to Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley.

Even if he is acquitted of all charges, Siegelman could have difficulty persuading voters to give him another chance in future races. But he did not rule out another run, saying Wednesday that he would consider it "if the mood is right and the time is right."

The preceding night, Moore hardly appeared a man defeated as he gathered with several hundred supporters at the Senior Activity Center in downtown Gadsden. With many backers gathered around big screen TVs, sadly watching Riley's victory speech, Moore's broad smile never faded, even as he conceded to the governor. "I'm not going to rule it in and I'm not going to rule it out," he said when asked whether he planned to seek elective office again.

Moore remains chairman of the Foundation for Moral Law, Inc., a Montgomery advocacy group which he said has been busy of late filing court briefs in cases involving church/state separation issues.

He also faces some sweat work in the near future. "I'm looking forward to going back to working on my farm and cutting the grass. My wife has a list she's been making daily," he said, as Kayla Moore, her arm wrapped around her husband's, looked on admiringly.

Like Moore, some supporters accepted the result as an expression of divine will.

Barry Baker, his clenched hand outstretched and eyes closed, seemed to be saying quiet amens as he listened to Moore answer a TV reporter's questions. Was this the end for Moore, and a major setback for the conservative Christian movement espoused by him?, Baker was asked. "A lot of times God says, 'Not now,'" the 47-year-old north Alabamian said. "It's not, 'No.' It's, 'Not now.'"

Moore is respected like a prophet with a message that America needs to hear, said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, a Washington, D.C., organization closely allied with Moore on the Ten Commandments issue.

"There will be a certain measure of disappointment in this loss," Schenck said in a Wednesday phone interview, "but ... Roy Moore has had such a significant place in American evangelism that some people like me may be relieved that he isn't restricted by his political office."

In 1994, Moore was an Etowah County Circuit judge when the American Civil Liberties Union sought to force him to remove a hand-carved plaque of the commandments from his courtroom. The ACLU argued that he was violating the Constitution's ban of state support of a particular religion; Moore countered that such displays on government property were in fact constitutionally protected.

Similar disputes have played out around the country, but Moore "was willing to push harder than any other single person that I can think of," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C., advocacy organization critical of Moore.

The ensuing publicity made Moore a heroic figure to the many Alabamians who saw nothing wrong with his stand. In 2000, he was elected chief justice of the state supreme court over a far better-funded opponent.

But the same recalcitrance that made him famous may have also led him to cross a line that even supporters could not abide. After the dead-of-night installation of the 5,300-pound Ten Commandments monument in the judicial building rotunda, he was removed from office for refusing to obey the federal court order to remove it.

Polls at the height of the controversy indicated strong popular backing; a Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll in November 2003 showed Moore leading Riley by 17 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup among GOP voters. But his standing steadily declined in follow-up surveys.

One reason may be that Riley is also an evangelical Christian who holds Bible studies in the governor's office and has so far run an administration free of scandal. In addition, several observers said, Moore was unable to persuade voters that he was more than a one-note wonder.

"I think he both legitimized religion . . . as an almost mainstream political issue, but at the same time, made people wary of it as the only issue," said Brad Moody, a political scientist at Auburn University Montgomery.

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