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The anti-LGBTQ former judge may make another U.S. Senate run -- and a plurality of Republican voters would choose him.
Prominent homophobe Roy Moore, who's threatening to run for U.S. senator from Alabama again, leads other potential Republican candidates in a new poll.
In the survey released today by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, 27 percent of respondents said they'd support Moore if the Republican primary were held now. Three Alabama members of the U.S. House trailed him -- Mo Brooks with 18 percent, Bradley Byrne with 13 percent, and Gary Palmer with 11 percent. State Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh had 4 percent, and businessman Tim Jones had 2 percent. A quarter of respondents were undecided.
Moore is well-known for his anti-LGBTQ stances. As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he fought marriage equality, claiming that the state didn't have to obey the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the matter. In 2017 he was removed from the state's high court for good, due to ethics violations related to his efforts against equal marriage rights. He then ran in a special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, ultimately losing to Democrat Doug Jones. The race was marked by accusations by several women of pedophilia and other sexual misconduct on Moore's part.
Jones's term is up in 2020, and in the poll, 40 percent of respondents said they would vote to reelect him, 50 percent would replace him with a Republican, and 10 percent were undecided.
Byrne is the only Republican who has formally declared his candidacy so far, but Moore has said he is thinking about another Senate run. "I'm seriously considering it," he told American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer, whose homophobia matches Moore's, last month.
Moore's poll results reflect the fact that he has greater name recognition than others in the Republican field, CBS News reports. But his extremism and the accusations will likely put off many voters, the network notes. "The national Democrats would be happy to have such a controversial candidate opposing Jones," according to CBS. "Jones might not beat a traditional Republican candidate in 2020 -- but Democrats know that he has already beaten Roy Moore once."
