Moore communication director quits; Conway comment draws complaints: Latest Alabama Senate race news

John Sharp | jsharp@al.com

Three weeks left

Alabama’s Senate election is less than three weeks away, and the race is only getting more interesting as Election Day draws near. Here’s the latest news about the showdown between Roy Moore and Doug Jones:

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Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com

Rogers out

John Rogers, the communications director for Roy Moore’s Senate campaign has resigned, the campaign announced in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

"John Rogers served as communications director for the Roy Moore for U.S. Senate campaign for the last several weeks and we appreciate his valuable contributions to our team," campaign chair Bill Armistead said in the statement.

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Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore

The Terminator

On Wednesday, Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey contributed his two cents to the ongoing controversy over the allegations against Moore.

"When women step forward with these allegations, it's my experience that there is truth there," Ducey said at a Phoenix food bank, according to The Hill.

"This was bad behavior 40 years ago, this is bad behavior today,” Ducey said. “If I was in the private sector, I’d terminate this guy. I’d like to see a different candidate, but you understand how our system works, and this is up to the people of Alabama."

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Brynn Anderson / AP

'I'd break his face'

Rep. Scott Taylor, a Virginia Republican, also had harsh words for Moore on Wednesday.

Appearing on CNN, Taylor said that he would have been violent with the Senate candidate if he had been accused of sexually assaulting his daughter, according to Business Insider.

"The 14-year-old girl that was there, I can tell you right now if it was my daughter, I'd break his face, I'd break his fingers, and I'd probably do a lot worse," Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, said.

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Creative Commons / Flickr user Neon Tommy

'Sickening'

Meanwhile, Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairman, condemned President Donald Trump's defense of Moore.

"He denies it. He totally denies it," Trump said at the White House Tuesday when asked about the allegations against Moore.

Choosing to defend Moore was a “sickening” move, according to Steele.

"This is beyond stupid. And there's irreparable harm that's being done to this party and to this country. Someone needs to take control here and it's certainly not the president," Steele said on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

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Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com

Got Moore's back

But not everyone is turning away from the Moore candidacy. He remains in the lead in polls, and some prominent Republican groups continue to back him.

On Tuesday, the Baldwin County Young Republicans group became the latest Young Republican Federation of Alabama affiliate to deviate from the state organization's decision to withdraw its support for Moore's candidacy.

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Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Conway complaint

Like the president, Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway has spoken out against Jones. Unlike Trump, because she is a government worker and not a campaign official, she is barred from speaking out about partisan political campaigns.

On Wednesday, the Campaign Legal Center's Walter Shaub, a former Office of Government Ethics director, filed a complaint against Conway over anti-Jones statements that she made during a Monday appearance on Fox News.

Complaints like the one filed against Conway with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel – which said it would open up a case file – carry penalties ranging from a $1,000 fine to removal from federal positions.

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New polls

On Tuesday, two new polls were released that showed Moore ahead in the race, though by a slimmer margin than before a succession of women came forward this month with accusations that he had engaged in various types of sexual misconduct with them decades ago, when they were teenagers.

The first poll, by Raycom News Network, shows Moore up by just 2 percentage points, with 47 percent of the vote to Jones’s 45 percent and 5 percent undecided. Moore had an 11-percent lead in that same poll the day before The Washington Post published the story featuring the first four Moore accusers.

The other poll, by Moore-friendly Breitbart News, had Moore at 46.4 percent and Jones at 40.5 percent, with 13.1 undecided.

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