Roy Moore, who is currently on suspension, has resigned as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in order to challenge Luther Strange for his seat in the US Senate.
Roy Moore today announced he is resigning from his position as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to run for the United States Senate.
“I’ll stand for the rights and liberties of the people,” Moore announced to cheering supporters and to reporters gathered at the State Capitol.
“My position has always been God first, family then country,” Moore said. “I share the vision of President Donald Trump to make America great again,” Moore said.
He later added, “Before we can make America great again, we’ve got to make America good again.”
Moore said a key to making that happen is making sure the federal government stays within constitutional bounds.
“We’ve got to understand that getting back to the Constitution, getting back to its restraints, are what we need in this country to make it great again.”
Moore said he has submitted his papers to resign from the state Supreme Court, a position he was suspended from for the remainder of his term.
Strange, of course, was appointed by disgraced former governor Robert Bentley to replace Jeff Sessions, who became US Attorney General. One presumes he’s vulnerable. Still, I’m dubious of Moore’s chances here.
Moore has, to say the least, been a controversial figure. He was previously elected chief justice in 2002, came to national prominence over his insistence on posting the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, and was removed from office in 2003 after refusing to obey an order from the U.S. Supreme Court to take them down.
He subsequently ran twice, in 2006 and 2010, for the Republican nomination for governor and fared quite poorly. Undaunted, he formed an exploratory committee for a run for the presidency in 2012 and quickly found there was little interest in him. He quickly decided to run for his old job instead and won rather easily. After multiple ethics violations, however, he was suspended last May.
My co-blogger Steven Taylor is in better touch with the pulse of Alabama’s voters than I am, since he remains in the state and I’ve been living in Virginia the past fourteen-plus years. But I suspect this will be Moore’s last rodeo.
