Roy Moore ‘seriously considering’ another Senate bid

Former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) is “seriously considering” challenging Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) again in 2020, his wife, Kayla Moore, said in a fundraising email Tuesday.

“Judge Moore is not only fighting back in court against those who conspired to destroy his political career, but is also seriously considering another run for the United States Senate!” the email states.

In the email, Kayla Moore cites an April poll finding Roy Moore at the top of the field of possible Republican candidates for the seat with 27 percent.

{mosads}Jones defeated Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, in a December 2017 special election to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became attorney general. Moore’s campaign was dogged by allegations that he romantically pursued teenage girls when he was in his 30s, while multiple women accused him of sexual assault.

Moore has denied the charges and repeatedly blamed The Washington Post, which broke the initial story about his behavior.

Kayla Moore claims the April poll “revealed that most Alabamian voters were NOT fooled by Washington Post’s fictitious story about Judge Roy Moore.”

Senate GOP leaders are reportedly firmly opposed to Moore mounting another run. They had backed then-incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary in 2017, but he was defeated by Moore.

“There’s no way on earth Roy Moore can be handed the nomination so he can turn around and give the seat back to Democrats,” a Republican strategist said in April. “This is a seat that belongs in the hands of Alabama Republicans, not Democrats.”

Jones’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

A number of GOP senators called on Moore to leave the race in 2017, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at the time that he believed the women making charges against Moore.

Roy Moore is currently suing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as well as Showtime and CBS over a segment in Cohen’s 2018 series “Who Is America” in which Cohen made it appear that Moore set off a “pedophile detector.” On Monday a federal judge granted a request from Cohen to transfer the case to federal court in New York.