One year ago today, Democrat Doug Jones pulled off a stunning victory and defeated Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s special Senate election by a razor-thin 1.5 percentage points.
The result has confounded the politicians and pundits who point to the state’s lack of a Democrat serving in the U.S. Senate since 1992.
President Donald Trump is still reportedly stunned. “The president asks me all the time, ‘Why did Roy Moore lose?’” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney was quoted as saying in September.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, last week, called the Jones victory over Moore, “the Alabama mistake of 2017.”
But was this election stunner the biggest upset to occur since Trump won the presidency in his own 2016 election surprise? Experts say it’s a nuanced conversation, though polling somewhat missed improbable outcomes in U.S. House seats in Oklahoma and South Carolina.
Jones, though an underdog headed into December 12, 2017, was polling as a “tossup” or within the margin of error in the days leading to the election.
But experts almost entirely agree on one thing: The 2017 Alabama special election outcome was an outlier as evident in the Republican dominance during the 2018 midterms in Alabama.
Also, they believe Jones faces an uphill battle for re-election in 2020.
David Hughes, a political science professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, said, “Jones is certainly among the most endangered incumbents.”
‘Anomaly’
Within Alabama, Jones’s victory is considered the biggest political upset in a generation.
“Regardless of the dynamics that produced the outcome, the Doug Jones victory would be up there in the pantheon of Alabama political surprises,” said retired Athens State University political science professor Jess Brown.
Not since the days of George Wallace had a political contest received as much media attention as the Alabama special election Senate contest. Much of that attention focused on Moore after The Washington Post reported in early November 2017, that he had allegedly made sexual advances on teenage girls when he was in his 30s while serving as a county prosecutor decades ago.
“It was the only show in town, and the only race in the country,” said Steve Flowers, a former Republican member of the Alabama House and commentator on state politics. “The best way to describe that election is to use the word, ‘anomaly.’ It was a complete anomaly which will never occur again in my lifetime or your lifetime.”
Flowers said the only comparable election stunner in Alabama occurred in 1986, when Guy Hunt became the first Republican since Reconstruction to win a governor’s race when he defeated Democrat Bill Baxley.
The Hunt win came after a controversy erupted on crossover voting during the Democratic primary runoff election. Initially, the results showed that conservative Democrat Charles Graddick as the winner. Baxley then challenged Graddick’s win. The Democratic Party eventually selected Baxley as their nominee.
“It defied fairness and logic,” said Flowers. “The voters went in (during the general election) and voted against the Democratic Party and ended up voting for Guy Hunt, who was an unknown Amway salesman and probate judge.”
Said Flower: “George Wallace used to say this all the time, but more people vote against someone than vote for them. You need to find a boogeyman and run against him. Roy Moore was the ultimate boogeyman.”
“I’m surprised that there wasn’t at least a blue ripple in Alabama,” said Brown, who claims that Republicans did not face any political accountability for scandals that have occurred in Montgomery since they won supermajority legislative status in 2010. “In spite of the situation in Montgomery, I can’t tell the Democrats made a small dent it the Republican dominance.”
Jones is also the lone Democrat in the Senate who is from a Deep South state after Democratic incumbent Senator Bill Nelson of lost to Republican Rick Scott last month.
Republicans gained two seats in the Senate to up their majority to 53-47, and Trump has criticized the political media for not focusing more attention on those Senate gains.
Oklahoma upset
But the Senate wins were not unexpected. It’s in the House where the surprises occurred which led the Democrats to a 40-seat win, and where political observers might draw comparisons with Alabama’s special senate election.
Political pundits have pointed to Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district, which encompasses Oklahoma City, as the year’s biggest upset.
FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes available polling data, listed the race as the biggest upset of the political year which was won by Democrat Kendra Horn over incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Russell. The website gave Horn a 1 in 15 chance at winning.
Horn won the congressional race with 50.7 percent of the vote to Russell’s 49.3 percent, flipping what was once labeled as a reliably safe Republican district for the first time since 1975.
James Davenport, a professor of political science at Rose State College near downtown Oklahoma City, said Horn’s aggressive campaign targeting issues like education and health care coupled with Russell’s lackluster campaigning and a changing demographic within the district, were “the necessary ingredients” for an upset.
Davenport believes the Horn win should be considered a bigger upset than Jones in Alabama.
“Russell was not nearly as controversial as Moore,” said Davenport. “There were no real comments or votes that made Russell especially vulnerable.”
He added, “Russell was an incumbent, whereas Moore was running for an open seat. Most people do not understand how difficult it is to defeat an incumbent member of Congress.”
South Carolina stunner
Democrats Kendra Horn of Oklahoma and Joe Cunningham of South Carolina scored surprising victories during the November 6, 2018, midterm elections. (AP photos)
However, South Carolina’s 1st congressional race in which Democrat Joe Cunningham defeated Republican Katie Arrington may have presented an even bigger upset. It was listed as the No. 2 midterm upset of 2018.
“Defeating a Republican there was almost unthinkable,” said David Woodard, a retired professor of political sciences at Clemson University, who also works as a GOP consultant. “Every statewide office, and both houses of the Legislature are in the hands of the party. Both senators and every congressman, expect the majority black district, are GOP.”
Cunningham won by 4,000 votes after Arrington had defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Mark Sanford during the June 12 Republican primary. Sanford’s loss was largely attributed to his frequent criticism of Trump, who endorsed Arrington.
Woodard said he viewed polling before the primary which indicated that Sanford was vulnerable, “but I never once thought a Democrat would win,” he added.
Arrington, though, suffered serious injuries during a car crash in June, and Woodard said it “really hurt her campaign.”
He said, “The injury kept Arrington out, and a grassroots campaign could make headway. This is a small district and anyone with ‘shoe leather’ has a chance. That happened to be this case.”
Jordan Ragusa, an associate political science professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, said he believes Cunningham’s victory over Arrington to be a bigger upset than Jones’s win.
“Special elections tend to be somewhat idiosyncratic given that they occur in a non-national environment, often with low voter turnout,” said Ragusa. “In regular biennial elections, the ‘fundamentals’ are much more potent, and many of the fundamentals worked against Cunningham.”
GOP upset
While Republicans suffered big losses in the House, there was one race that has been singled out as a GOP upset win.
In the 1st congressional district in Pennsylvania, Republican Brian Fitzpatrick defeated Democrat Scott Wallace by a margin of 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent.
Though the district was redrawn in February, Fitzpatrick became the first Republican to win it since 1949. He was also one of only three Republicans to survive the midterms in a district that had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Christopher Borick, professor of political sciences at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said Fitzpatrick was an “outlier” in that he survived in a mostly suburban, “wealthy” district that includes suburban Philadelphia areas such as Bucks County.
“Fitzpatrick worked extremely hard to insulate himself from Trump and remained fairly popular in his district despite the GOP brand’s erosion in places like Bucks County,” said Borick. “He also was the benefactor of getting an opponent that was not the strongest option Democrats could put up. If Fitzpatrick faced any of the Democratic women that won the other suburban Philly districts, I believe the outcome may have been very different.”
Senate upsets
Aside from House district upsets, the Jones victory stands alone in the Senate. There were no major Democratic shockers in Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Indiana or Missouri even if the party lost seats. Likewise, the Republicans couldn’t pull off upsets in West Virginia, Montana and Minnesota.
David Mayhew, a professor of political sciences at Yale University and a leading scholar on Congress, said a better comparison with the Jones win is with another well-known “off-November ‘special’ Senate election” that occurred in 2010 in Massachusetts.
That year, which was at the height of the conservative tea party movement in America, Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley by a margin of 51.9 percent to 47.1 percent.
The Senate seat was left vacant after the death of Ted Kennedy, the so-called “liberal lion,” who held the seat from 1962 until his death in 2009. Jones, in his victory, filled a vacated seat left open after ultra-conservative ex-Senator Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Trump’s choice for attorney general.
“That was really unexpected,” said Mayhew, referring to Scott Brown’s victory in 2010. “Doug Jones’s victory was pretty much expected, or at least seen as a tossup, as of election day, notwithstanding the oddity of a Democratic victory in Alabama, generally speaking.”
Brown lost his bid for a full Senate term to Democrat Elizabeth Warren during the 2012 general election.
Will Jones face a similar fate? Mayhew, like other political observers, said the Jones win “looks to me chiefly a GOP nominating mistake.”
“But I wouldn’t count Jones out in 2020,” said Mayhew. “As I see it sitting up here in New England, he is a canny politician, he will draw East and West Coast money, the state GOP could crash again, and anyway, Senate incumbents generally get re-elected.”
Said Mayhew: “Yet, he will need to decide how to position himself on immigration and judgeship nominations during 2019-20. And the Alabama GOP might get its act together and field a candidate attractive to the state’s median voter; losing is among other things a lesson.”
2020 chances
Flowers said he can’t see Jones winning, given the dominance displayed by Alabama Republicans on November 6. All statewide seats held by Republicans were easily retained by voters during last month’s midterms.
Trump, for one, is likely to be on the 2020 ballot. The president has maintained strong popularity in Alabama, even as his support has eroded in more swing states.
“Trump will be the Republican nominee, and whoever the Republican nominee is, is going to carry Alabama probably 65 percent to 35 percent,” said Flowers. “That hurts Jones.”
Hughes said the outlook for Jones could be daunting after analyzing the average percentage of Republican candidate support during U.S. Senate elections between 1994 and 2016.
According to Hughes’ analysis, Republicans won 66.5 percent of the vote during those elections in which Moore was not the GOP candidate. Jones won with 50 percent.
“That’s tough,” said Hughes.
Who the Republicans nominate to run against him will matter, said Flowers.
“Roy Moore … he could run again,” said Flowers. “He likes running, and he could run again and his 20 percent could be enough. I don’t think it happens. Plus, (the 2020 Alabama Senate election) won’t be the only show in town.”
Brown said the Republican primary could be a “blood bath” in two years, and that whoever is nominated will be a decisive factor on whether Jones can win an unlikely six-year term.
McConnell has already signaled the Alabama Senate contest as a top priority of his party headed into 2020, and the race could be expensive. Jones, according to the website Opensecrets.com, has raised more than $24 million.
“I don’t count out Senator Jones in terms of adequate funds to run,” said Brown. “The reason the candidates with the weaker party don’t compete is they don’t have the money. He’ll have a campaign treasury.”
Brown thinks Jones has an “uphill fight” to win a six-year term to the Senate. But, he added, “This idea he’s a Democrat and thereby he’s toast in Alabama, I don’t think that is the case.”