Burnt Orange Report

Alabama (Roy Moore) Primary Recap

By Byron LaMasters

It looks as if Roy Moore supporters were one for four tonight, but the wing-nuts have taken to a little gloating tonight with the victory of a Roy Moore judge over a pro-business moderate. The AP reports:

A supporter of former state chief justice Roy Moore earned the Republican nomination for a seat on the state's high court Tuesday, but three other candidates who supported Moore's stand on a Ten Commandments monument fell short.

In what amounted to a referendum on Moore's effort to acknowledge God in public buildings, the GOP's business wing for the most part fended off social conservatives intent on keeping the ousted justice's fight alive.

The only high court justice seeking re-election Tuesday, however, lost to former Moore aide Tom Parker. Parker had 105,654 votes, or 51 percent, compared to 102,446 votes, or 49 percent for Associate Justice Jean Brown, with 96 percent of precincts reporting in the unofficial count.

``It was obviously a very difficult race since she outspent us 6-to-1 and had paid staff, where we were able to get by with just an army of volunteers who were so motivated about this issue that they jumped into something that they had not been involved with before,'' Parker said in a telephone interview shortly before his supporters knelt in a prayer of thanksgiving.

[...]

Moore supporter Jerry Stokes was in second place and well behind Jefferson County Probate Judge Mike Bolin in a four-way race in another of the three Supreme Court seats up for re-election. But with 96 percent of precincts reporting, Bolin barely had the 50 percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff with Stokes.

Shelby County judge Patti M. Smith defeated Pam Baschab, a judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals with Moore's support, in a primary race for the third court seat. Smith had 58 percent of the vote to Baschab's 42 percent, with 96 percent of precincts reporting.

The Ten Commandments issue was little help for Moore's attorney, Phillip Jauregui, who put up a GOP primary challenge to six-term Rep. Spencer Bachus. Bachus trounced Jauregui, garnering 87 percent of the vote with 100 percent of the precincts counted in the congressional district.

So, overall, tonight was a vote for sanity in Alabama, and hopefully Tom Parker can get knocked off in November by the Democrats if he manages to prevail tonight (as the current results seem to suggest).