Damage done: How Trump ‘jumped off cliff’ with accused paedophile

AN AUSTRALIAN who was part of the Democrats’ historic win in Alabama says the result is hugely damaging for the President.

Alabama voters rejected Roy Moore, despite President Donald Trump urging them to vote for him. Picture: AP Photo/Alex Brandon

AN AUSTRALIAN writer who was part of Doug Jones’s historic win in Alabama says Donald Trump “disgraced himself” by siding with accused child molester Roy Moore and casting doubt on his accusers’ claims.

Mr Jones secured an upset victory in the special senate election on Tuesday, becoming the first Democrat from the deeply Republican state to claim a seat in about 25 years.

Australian journalist Greg Truman, who is writing a memoir on Mr Jones’s life, was beside the former lawyer for the crucial final weeks of the campaign and witnessed his “overwhelming” victory in Birmingham on Tuesday night.

Democratic US senate candidate Doug Jones and his wife Louise after his historic win. Picture: AP Photo/John Bazemore

Mr Truman said the groundbreaking win would have lasting effects and dealt a serious blow to the President.

“Republicans have really lost the grip,” he told news.com.au.

“As a poll on Trump and Trumpism, it was a big, big fail.”

The loss reduces Donald Trump’s majority in the US senate to one vote. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The neck-and-neck election was engulfed by allegations against Republican candidate Roy Moore, who stood accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and pursuing romantic relationships with a handful of other teens when he was in his 30s. Mr Moore denied the claims.

Mr Trump also cast doubt on Mr Moore’s accusers and urged Alabamians to back the former supreme court judge.

Mr Truman, who has lived in New York for the past two decades, said the President’s choice to endorse Mr Moore would be hugely damaging.

Republican candidate Roy Moore was controversial even before allegations of sexual harassment due to his staunch views against homosexuality and abortion. Picture: AFP/Getty/Joe Raedle

“This campaign has not only exposed Moore for what he is; with the women’s issues and the Me Too issues coming into play, Trump jumped off a cliff with it,” Mr Truman said.

“He has exposed himself and he’s disgraced himself. There’s nowhere to hide this time.

“He will have his backers, but the truth is it will be really hard for him to gather momentum over the next 12 months.”

In his victory speech, Doug Jones said ’we have shown the country the way that we can be unified’. Picture: AFP/Jim Watson

The Australian believes Mr Jones would have won “Moore or no Moore” because the campaign tapped into a “great desire for change”.

“We were working towards a goal that was highly unlikely but there was a real feeling — even before Moore utterly disgraced himself — that we had a great chance and we were reading the tea leaves the right way on the need for change here,” he said.

The campaign chose not to push hard on the issues of the sexual harassment allegations or criticisms of Mr Trump, opting instead to “let people figure it out themselves”.

An Australian and an Alabamian walk into a bar ... pic.twitter.com/W0ri3oeJ1f

— Greg Truman (@gregtruman) December 13, 2017

Mr Truman said voices of extremism and white supremacy had resurfaced in the south and sensible voters had risen up to reject it.

“Essentially the centre of American politics has been gutted. The GOP is being more extreme and, thanks to evangelicals, they’ve become one-issue focused — the abortion issue,” Mr Truman said, referring to the Republicans by their nickname, the Grand Old Party.

“And those factions, who were always powerful, are becoming more powerful as the centre empties out.”

Mr Truman said the Democratic party had entrenched this reality by “largely abandoning the south”.

“Not feeling they could win, the Democrats walked out on the south,” he said.

“Because the GOP had a stranglehold on it, candidates were pushing more and more extreme ideas to win power.

“Because a GOP win could be taken for granted, these extreme political views were being given credibility.”

Alabama voters turned out to repudiate “the ridiculousness of bigotry and stupidity”.

“Doug is a great counterpoint to that. He’s a direct and honest guy,” he said.

Truman said the Democrats could learn from the Jones campaign, which resisted talking about Washington and focused on local, “pocketbook” issues.

He said the Democrats needed to reconnect with their middle- and working-class base to have a hope of replicating Mr Jones’s success in the 2018 midterm elections.

The turnout of African-American voters, which Truman described as being at “Obama level”, was also crucial. A staggering 98 per cent of those who voted supported Mr Jones on Tuesday, according to CNN exit polling.

But the desire for change doesn’t stop there in the south, which has wrestled with racial issues for decades.

“The white population here want redemption. There’s a sense they want to do something to end this ridiculous bigotry,” he said.

Mr Truman has been professionally engaged with Mr Jones for about four years working on a memoir due next year, entitled Seeking Justice, telling the story of the lawyer’s remarkable career in the courtroom.

Mr Jones revived the “coldest of cold cases” when he secured convictions against two Ku Klux Klan members involved in the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham’s 16th St Baptist Church, which killed four African-American girls.

Truman said Mr Jones had the courage to prosecute a case that had “laid idle for 40 years”, and he showed that same tenacity in his senate campaign.

“In a similar way, he was told, ‘You’ve got to be kidding, you are trying to do the impossible,’” he said.

Mr Truman spent the last few weeks of the campaign alongside Mr Jones in the car as someone to discuss the issues with, offer a “shoulder to cry on” and ensure he was “honest to himself”.

“And he was that way through the whole thing; he hasn’t pandered to a soul,” he said.

All that is left is for Mr Jones to “get on with it” in the senate.

“It’s an extraordinary moment and I think we’re yet to see the repercussions,” Truman said.

“There was a huge number of people who said it felt like a new day in Birmingham, Alabama, that the sun is shining a little brighter.

“It’ll make a good last chapter for the book.”