Gillespie: ‘I would not be able to bring myself to vote for Roy Moore’

Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said Tuesday that if he lived in Alabama he would not be able to vote for controversial GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore.

On an episode of “The Axe Files” with CNN’s David Axelrod, Gillespie, who lost to Democrat Ralph Northam in last month’s Virginia gubernatorial race, said that Moore is too much of a “long-term” risk for the party.

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“If I were in Alabama I would not be able to bring myself to vote for Roy Moore,” Gillespie said. “I couldn’t vote for [Democratic candidate] Doug Jones, but I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to vote for [Moore].”

He added that Moore’s election would be trading “long-term pain for … short-term gain,” but cautioned that Alabama voters were unlikely to take the advice of national experts.

Alabama voters ” ‘don’t want folks telling us what we know, who we can and cannot vote for. We’ll make that decision ourselves,’ ” Gillespie told Axelrod.

Gillespie was defeated by Northam by about 9 points in the state’s Nov. 7 election, which Democrats swept, picking up 16 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Moore is facing off against Jones in a Tuesday special Senate election. Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls, defeated Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who currently holds the seat, in a primary runoff in September.

Moore has denied the allegations, which he calls a joint effort by Jones’s campaign, the Republican establishment and the media to discredit his candidacy.