Doug Jones enters Election Day after intense final week of campaigning

Melissa Brown
Montgomery Advertiser
U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones and his wife Louise arrive at his rally in Birmingham, Ala. on Monday night December 11, 2017.

Alabama Senate candidate Doug Jones will walk into the Brookwood Baptist Church polling station in Mountain Brook on Monday on the heels of an eleventh-hour effort to become the first Democratic senator from the state in two decades. 

The Jones campaign on Monday released final campaign trail numbers, noting some 1.2 million phone calls made in the last seven weeks and 300,000 homes visited. The campaign says volunteers visited 80,000 of those homes in the last weekend of the campaign.

Despite an active travel schedule for the candidate himself — more than 225 events in the last two months, according to the campaign — Jones largely eschewed big-name national endorsements on the ground in Alabama. That all changed this weekend, when a contingent of lawmakers from the Congressional Black Caucus descended on the state.

But the surrogate surge is seen by some as a last-minute heave that should have been executed earlier in the campaign. The weekend blitz appeared to target black and younger voters, demographics Jones needs to turn out at the polls, but the events sometimes missed the mark. A Saturday campaign event at Alabama State University attracted an older and whiter crowd; ASU, a historically black college, had wrapped up their fall semester the day before and the campus was empty.

A potentially huge question in the election postmortem will be if the final act was too little, too late, said Derryn Moten, chairman of the History and Political Science Department at Alabama State University.

“If he’s victorious, that question becomes moot. If he’s not victorious, and there’s not the black turnout that people are hoping for, that becomes a large question that looms over his campaign,” Moten said. “They were nervous, and probably had some legitimate reason to be a little anxious, about these big hitters stomping through the state for Doug Jones.”

More:Doug Jones calls in backup in final campaign push

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick stumped for Jones in Selma and Montgomery, while Congressmen Sanford Bishop and Cedric Richmond canvassed on Sunday.

On the celebrity side, acclaimed musicians Jason Isbell and Paul Janeway, the vocalist for band St. Paul & the Broken Bones, turned out full capacity crowds at two Get Out the Vote concerts Saturday. Charles Barkley and Uzo Aduba appeared with Jones at a Monday night rally.

More:Charles Barkley: 'We've got to stop looking like idiots to the nation'

Jones final push stands in sharp contrast to his opponent’s campaign. After a Tuesday appearance last week, Roy Moore's campaign went dark until a Monday night rally with Steve Bannon and other conservative activists. Following multiple allegations leveled in November of sexual assault and misconduct, Moore largely went to ground apart from a handful of press conferences and media appearances where he took few questions. 

U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones and his wife Louise at his rally in Birmingham, Ala. on Monday night December 11, 2017.

 

More:Days before election, Roy Moore disappears from campaign trail

Jones last weekend compared his opponent to a groundhog.

“If you can find Roy Moore, let me know,” Jones told reporters Monday.

Despite the allegations against Moore, Jones still faces an uphill battle in a deeply red state with an anemic state party infrastructure. The candidate started the race with virtually no name recognition, Moten said, particularly among black voters.

"I think anything or anyone who could validate Doug Jones’ background for African-American voters bodes well for his campaign," Moten said of the final surrogate push. "I think it was a pretty smart thing to do."

More:Roy Moore, Doug Jones and the issues: A voter's guide to the Alabama Senate election

Jones has concentrated his ground game on Alabama’s major metros in the last week, hitting multiple stops in Birmingham, Huntsville and Montgomery. Jones will need to win big in Jefferson and Montgomery counties, which are historically Democratic-leaning area.

Jones also may need the Republican-leaning Mobile and Madison counties to win. Jones has campaigned heavily in the Huntsville area, where Roy Moore lost to Democratic Chief Justice nominee Bob Vance in 2012.

Moore has also historically underperformed in Tuscaloosa County, which typically runs red but is also home to a higher education bastion and core of younger voters.

Tasha Coryell, a Tuscaloosa resident, began volunteering with the Tuscaloosa County Democrats to canvass for Doug Jones in the primaries. She says momentum for Jones in the area has been building since the primaries, but recently people have been “streaming” into the volunteer headquarters.

“When people think of Alabama, they think of Roy Moore and that’s horrible,” Coryell said. “There are people here who are working hard to make Alabama a better and more equitable place. I think we can show the rest of the nation what Alabama is."

Many Doug Jones volunteers say they felt hamstrung after the 2016 presidential election and frustrated with months of negative headlines as multiple Alabama politicians became mired in scandals. Roy Moore's candidacy was the final push toward activism. 

"I wanted to re-channel whatever frustration I was having," said Huntsville native Doris Jean at a phone bank last week. It was her first involvement in any political campaign, she said.

Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, a Montgomery resident, said this special election feels as momentous as a presidential election to some Alabamians.

“We don’t need this kind of representation for the state of Alabama," Crutcher said. 

The election will decide "what type of state Alabama wants to have," another volunteer said.

While Jones' volunteers have been enthusiastic and energetic at campaign events, few had expectations of a landslide victory on Tuesday. But many hoped a hard sprint through the finish line could give Jones the edge he needs. 

"If Doug Jones is not successful tomorrow, we have to look to the future," Coryell said, looking forward to future local campaigns. "Maybe it means the state of Alabama as a whole can’t elect a Democrat right now. But there are counties that will show they will turn up for a Democrat."

On Monday night, Jones briefly discussed his support of the Children's Health Insurance Plan and commitment to partnership with Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. But he and his surrogates framed the Tuesday election as a choice for "decency and integrity," as Woodfin put it, rather than a political party.

More:Without CHIP renewal, 84,000 Alabama children could lose insurance Feb. 1

"The majority of the people in Alabama say it is time to put our decency and our state before political parties," Jones said. "It's time that we say no more."