In 1979, according to a new report from the Washington Post, Roy Moore, then a thirty-two-year-old assistant district attorney in
Alabama, brought a fourteen-year-old girl, Leigh Corfman, to his home
and sexually molested her. Three additional women told the Post that
Moore, who is now the Republican nominee in Alabama for the U.S. Senate,
had pursued them when they were in their mid-to-late teens and he was in
his early thirties, though they do not allege that these encounters led
to sexual contact. The accounts in the Post were strongly
corroborated: Corfman’s mother confirmed that Corfman had discussed the
incident with her; two childhood friends confirmed that Corfman “told
them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says that
Corfman identified the man as Moore.” Corfman alleged that Moore first
approached her outside a courthouse where his office was located, and
where her mother was attending a divorce hearing; the Post confirmed
these places and dates as well.

The report has prompted some Republicans, including Senator Mitch
McConnell, to immediately question whether Moore should continue to run
for the Senate seat previously occupied by Jeff Sessions. Senator John McCain
said that Moore should step aside now. Moore, meanwhile, has denied the
allegations—and so, it seems, have many of his supporters.

Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, attended Moore’s rally with Sarah Palin in Montgomery, in September, and has campaigned for the former Alabama
Chief Justice almost constantly since he won the Republican Senate
primary over Luther Strange. Reached by phone this afternoon, Dooley
said that she laughed at the Post’s report. “I think the allegations
are bullshit,” Dooley told me. “I think they have no merit. People are
pulling out all the stops to prevent Roy Moore from being elected
senator, because he will change things.”

She went on, “I’m very sensitive to sexual-harassment stuff, when it’s
credible. Every woman, at some point, has been a victim. I had someone
make a strong pass at me twenty years ago, and I told him, ‘If you ever
do that again, I’ll do what Lorena Bobbitt did to her husband.’ So I
have sympathy for women that are credible. I just don’t believe for a
minute that these women are credible. They’re joining the bandwagon,
trying to get their few minutes of fame.” She added, “Why didn’t that
one girl’s mother do anything about it? If my daughter had told me
something like that, you bet I’d do something.”

Dooley suggested that the report was part of a liberal conspiracy to
sabotage Moore, which she predicted would fail. “I think it will
backfire in Alabama,” she said. “I don’t think anybody who knows Judge
Moore, has seen him in action, would even begin to believe it. It’s
Clarence Thomas all over again. All the story has accomplished is to
galvanize the support of Roy Moore, which I already see happening on
Facebook.”

Three weeks ago, Crawford Melton, a conservative-leaning lawyer in
Opelika, Alabama, told me he wasn’t inclined to vote in the Senate
election, given the options. Still, he had predicted a landslide victory
for Moore, who was his law-school classmate and pal at the University of
Alabama. “But this report may derail the Moore train,” Melton said. I
asked Melton if the allegations seemed credible to him. “He didn’t come
across to me as that type,” Melton said. “But who the hell knows. The
whole landscape now has changed, because of this Harvey Weinstein thing.
And Kevin Spacey. I don’t think you can dismiss it that easily.” Still,
Melton was beginning to rationalize a vote for Moore. “Word was he was
gonna run for governor. Well, he can do a whole lot less damage in the
Senate here than if he were elected governor. I’d rather give him one
vote in the Senate than being in control of the state of Alabama.”

A powerful lawyer in Birmingham who knows Moore and asked not to be
named was also inclined to vote Republican, despite the Post’s report. “This does not seem consistent with his character, O.K.? If
what the youngest of them says was true, it was pretty horrible and he
shouldn’t be senator,” he said. “But I question the accuracy of it.” He
went on, “For a thirty-year-old man to ask out an eighteen-year-old girl
to have a Coke, to me, is maybe improper. I don’t like it. But I’m not
sure that’s pursuing an immoral relationship. A lot of us have dated
younger women. And, remember, we’re talking about Gadsden, Alabama.” He
predicted that other Alabamians would have a similar response to the
allegations. “The Washington Post isn’t the most authoritative source
in Alabama,” the lawyer said, “especially not in Coleman, or Gadsden, or
Opp. I could be proven wrong. I thought Nixon was a good guy until I
heard the tapes. But, right now, it doesn’t change my vote. I’ll vote
Republican.”

Alabama’s state auditor, Jim Ziegler, agreed, telling the
Washington Examiner, “There is nothing to see here. The allegations
are that a man in his early 30s dated teenage girls. Even the
Washington Post report says that he never had sexual intercourse with
any of the girls, and never attempted sexual intercourse.” Ziegler went
on, invoking personages in the Bible. “Zachariah was extremely old to
marry Elizabeth, and they became the parents of John the Baptist,”
he told the Examiner. “Also, take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a
teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of
Jesus.”

Joe Meadow, a partner at TJC Mortgage, in Birmingham, told me that he,
too, was unmoved. “It’s popular right now,” Meadow said, “saying
everybody sexually assaults women. Especially men in power.” Meadow
said he didn’t believe it. “Doing this would be very out of character
for a man who has suffered a lot for his principles and what he believes
in.”