Early Thursday evening, after a cartoonish debate between Roy Moore and Luther Strange, the Alabama politicians who are competing for Jeff Sessions’s old Senate seat, around five hundred people were gathered outside the train depot in Montgomery to rally in support of Moore. Heading into the event, Moore, a former Alabama State Supreme Court chief justice who twice was removed from office, was leading the incumbent, Luther Strange, by at least eight
points in the polls. With the notable exception of President Trump, who endorsed
Strange, the Republican Party’s anti-establishment wing has rallied
behind Moore. Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump adviser, would be
stumping at the depot on Moore’s behalf, as would Sarah Palin. At least
one flyer touted the evening as a “Sarah Palin Rally with Judge Roy
Moore.” An Asian woman, one of perhaps a dozen minorities in attendance, held a sign aloft that read “MR. PRESIDENT AND MR. VICE PRESIDENT, I LOVE YOU BUT YOU ARE WRONG!”
Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, drove a hundred
and fifty miles from Atlanta to attend the rally. As members of the
Bikers for Trump group flexed their muscles for TV cameras, young
children waved American flags, and churchgoers clutched copies of Palin’s
books, hoping to get them autographed, Dooley worked the crowd urgently.
By 7 P.M. it was still nearly ninety degrees outside, but
Dooley—e-mailing, texting, and talking in equal measure—was unfazed. She
had come to explain the importance of next Tuesday’s G.O.P. runoff, and
of voting for Moore, to anyone still sitting on the fence.
At one point, Dooley approached three women who stood at the edge of the
crowd in a tight semicircle. They looked to be in their sixties, a bit
older than Dooley. Two were sisters, split in their support.
“I drove three hours one way to get here,” Dooley told the women, who
hadn’t asked.
“Why?” one sister asked.
“This is the most important Senate election we’ve had in a long time,”
Dooley replied. “I went to the University of Alabama. So, roll, Trump,
roll.”
Dooley went on, “Let me tell you why. Am I upset about Trump? Oh, heck
yes, I am. But I’ve been in politics for over forty years, O.K.? The
last thing you want is for this to be a contest between those that like
Trump and those that don’t like Trump.” She pointed at her phone. “So I
even made a thing on Facebook that shows that Trump’s base supports
Judge Moore.”
“I don’t support Moore,” the first sister said.
“I do,” Dooley said. “Who do you support?”
“Strange,” the sister replied.
“Neither one of them are fit to serve, in my opinion,” the second sister
said.
“He’s not gonna win,” Dooley said, referring to Strange. “Judge Moore is
going to win.” The sisters and their silent friend were eyeing Dooley
more intently now.
“Look at all this,” Dooley said, again pointing to the screen of her
phone, where she’d pulled up what appeared to be a news story. “ ‘Luther
Strange set up a sweetheart deal.’ Look at all this corruption. I call
him Lying Luther.”
“Do you know about Moore’s?” one sister said. “I know about Moore’s.
Years, years, years of corruption. I don’t trust him.”
“I think Donald Trump has been given bad advice,” Dooley said. “I think
that Mitch McConnell—look at the way he’s kind of slowly moving the
President away from the Trump doctrine. I think the President has got
advisers around him that are doing bad. Roy Moore winning can do more to
advance the Trump doctrine. We will have sent the message that this is a
referendum on Mitch McConnell’s leadership.” She went on, “I hear that
if Roy is elected, the establishment will be so afraid, you’ll have some
senators step down and decide not to run.”
“Do you support building the wall?” one sister asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dooley replied.
“Well, Moore doesn’t.”
“That’s a lie,” Dooley said.
“Well, I heard him say it.”
“You heard part of it,” Dooley countered. “You did not hear all of it.”
She then pivoted: “Luther refuses to go on record against DACA. I
actually saw the video.”
This went on for another ten minutes. Then Dooley saw a Biker for Trump
she knew and wandered off.
“Who was she, again?” one of the women asked once Dooley was out of
earshot.
The biker was named Bill Taylor. He had a braided beard and a tattoo on
his left arm that said “Better to die on your feet than live on your
knees.” He was friendly. “Moore and Trump are more or less the same,”
Taylor said. “Trump jumped the gun. He just went for the incumbent.
We’re sending a hundred, hundred and fifty bikes to Trump’s rally for
Strange in Huntsville tomorrow.” He added, “For the President, not for
Strange.”
“I can promise you,” Dooley chimed in, “that Luther will say you
endorsed him.”
“It’s been a big rift in the organization,” Taylor went on. “This week,
especially. Because everybody backs Moore, but it’s ‘Bikers for
Trump.’ So we have to go up there to Huntsville for the President.”
After a group rendition of “Proud to be an American,” as well as the
national anthem and a prayer for Moore rebuking Strange for “hiding
behind the skirts of others,” a local radio personality took the stage.
He noted that Trump had been “ill advised” in his endorsement of
Strange. The d.j. for the event also seemed to have been misled: at
seven-thirty, John Lennon’s “Imagine” came on the speakers. Only half of
it played, right up to “no religion, too.” (The d.j. later said, “It was
just a test song I picked. It was on my phone.”)
Soon, another local speaker was excoriating the Senate Majority Leader.
“Mitch McConnell,” he said, “you can spend five million, ten million, or
fifteen million, but you can’t make chicken salad out of chickenshit!”
Siran Stacy, a former running back for the University of Alabama, took the
podium next and addressed Trump. “You can come down here,” he said.
We’ll slaughter a hog and give you some sausage. But don’t tell us how
to run our house.”
After being introduced as a “rock star who helped write Trump’s U.N.
speech,” Gorka finally emerged from Moore’s bus. “Washington watched the
debate, and they’re worried,” he said. “Tuesday must be a sign to the
swamp dwellers in D.C.” He went on, “Tuesday is November 8th all over
again: the voters can choose corruption or choose America.” With that,
Palin, introduced as “the original mama grizzly,” appeared. She told the
crowd that Moore “was deplorable before deplorable was cool.” She
employed a number of football metaphors—“trick plays may razzle-dazzle,”
she said, in apparent criticism of McConnell, “but defense wins
championships.” A man in the crowd told a friend, “She’s speaking our
language.”
Palin ended by offering the crowd exactly the pro-Moore argument they
seemed to need. “A vote for Judge Moore is a vote for the agenda that
elected the President,” she said.
Moore himself arrived onstage after the evening’s third playing of
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and spoke for three minutes. He
thanked Gorka and Palin—“I’m not near as pretty as she is,” he said.
“Everybody in Washington is watching this election,” he went on. “I
don’t have their vision of how it’s going to affect America. But they’re
watching the 2018 senatorial election coming up, and they see the
benefit of bringing change.” He mentioned “division in our society”
among “black and white, red and yellow,” and went on to underline the
“stupidity” of political correctness. “We need to bring back the
understanding of God, morality, and the Constitution of the United
States,” he said, before concluding, “I know y’all came to see Sarah
Palin. That’s why I came.”
Afterward, an older couple walking back to their car said that they were
“yellow-dog Democrats” who had attended the rally “only for
entertainment.” The woman offered her impression of Moore’s oration:
“He’s no George Wallace.”