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POLITICS

Roy Moore Gets Trump Endorsement and R.N.C. Funding for Senate Race
By RICHARD FAUSSET, ALAN BLINDER and JONATHAN MARTINDEC. 4, 2017
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G.O.P. Dilemma: Support Roy Moore or Not
Roy S. Moore, the Senate candidate from Alabama, is accused of sexual misconduct
with minors. President Trump has endorsed him, but other Republicans are wrestling
with the political risk of supporting him. By CHRIS CIRILLO on Publish Date
December 4, 2017. Photo by William Widmer for The New York Times. Watch in Times
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AUBURN, Ala. President Trump on Monday strongly endorsed Roy S. Moore, the
Republican nominee for a United States Senate seat here, prompting the Republican
National Committee to restore its support for a candidate accused of sexual
misconduct against teenage girls.

Mr. Trumps endorsement strengthened what had been his subdued, if symbolically
significant, embrace of Mr. Moores campaign. At Mr. Trumps direct urging, and to
the surprise of some Republican Party officials, the national committee, which
severed ties to Mr. Moore weeks ago, opened a financial spigot that could help Mr.
Moore with voter turnout in the contests closing days.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need
Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter on Monday,
before he formally endorsed Mr. Moore during a telephone call. We need his vote on
stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges
2nd Amendment and more.

Mr. Trumps endorsement and the partys reversal hours later came a day after
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, had stepped back from his earlier
criticism of Mr. Moore, saying Alabama voters should make the call on whether to
send Mr. Moore to the Senate. Taken together, the weeks developments suggested
that Republicans were increasingly confident that Mr. Moore is well positioned to
defeat Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee, in next weeks special election.

But even as senior Republicans again coalesced around Mr. Moore, there were
reminders that the partys internal divide over its nominee remained. Mitt Romney,
the partys presidential nominee in 2012, warned that Mr. Moores presence in
Congress would be a stain on Republicans and the country.

Continue reading the main story

No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity, Mr. Romney wrote
on Twitter.

Although Mr. Moore appeared to be regaining important support in his party, some of
his accusers pushed back at recent remarks in which he said he did not even know
them, let alone behave inappropriately.

It is not clear whether the back-and-forth will do anything to change the contours
of the race, which is especially close by the standards of a state where
Republicans tend to rout their rivals, but many party officials believe that Mr.
Moore has steadied his candidacy and that they should back or at least avoid
further antagonizing someone who could soon be in the Senate.
Mr. McConnell, for instance, refrained Sunday from criticizing Mr. Moore or
repeating earlier remarks indicating that the Senate might expel Mr. Moore if he
were seated after numerous accusations of misconduct and unwanted overtures. Nine
women have come forward in recent weeks to describe their encounters with Mr.
Moore, including a woman who said that Mr. Moore molested her when she was 14 years
old.

With the notable exception of Mr. Romney, many national Republicans seem to have
shifted their approach: less active criticism of Mr. Moore and fewer threats of his
swift expulsion from Congress, and more guarded comments, if any at all. Mr. Trump,
though, could prove far more vocal about the race, especially when he appears
Friday in Pensacola, Fla., which is within the Mobile, Ala., media market.

Unlike many Republicans in Washington, Mr. Trump, who himself has been accused of
sexual misconduct, never cut off Mr. Moore completely. On Nov. 21, he telegraphed
his support when he repeated Mr. Moores denials of impropriety and attacked Mr.
Jones. But until Monday, it was unclear how much more Mr. Trump would do to aid Mr.
Moores campaign.

Many top White House officials were not aware that Mr. Trump intended to fully tie
himself to Mr. Moore on Monday; as in so many instances, they found out about his
decision from his posts on Twitter. West Wing officials said Mr. Trump simply wants
Republicans to retain control of the seat that Attorney General Jeff Sessions held
for 20 years, and he is willing to avert his gaze from the allegations to stop Mr.
Jones.

Speaking to a group of Republican senators last week, the president said he was not
particularly enthused about Mr. Moores candidacy, but he felt as if his victory
would represent a better outcome than the election of a Democrat who would often
oppose their agenda, according to a Republican official in the room for the
conversation.

Yet Mr. Trump disregarded, and irritated, some of his more cautious advisers on
Monday in prompting the R.N.C. to restore get-out-the-vote funds to Mr. Moore,
according to one Republican in contact with the president. The Senate Republican
campaign arm, which is controlled by Mr. McConnell, had no plans to offer financial
help to Mr. Moore, officials said.

Roy Moore Is Mired in a Sexual Misconduct Scandal. Heres How It Happened.

Even to some of his allies, Mr. Trumps decision to link the party to someone
accused of preying on teenagers marked another example of his impulsive style and
penchant for creating new controversies when he is under fire.

Two factors appear to have moved Mr. Trump. He likes to associate with winners, and
Mr. Moore has apparently stabilized in the polls. Further, no other women have come
forward recently to level additional accusations against Mr. Moore.

But Mr. Moore, who was twice effectively removed as chief justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court, has been unable to outrun the accusations that became public last
month.

Debbie Wesson Gibson, who has said she dated Mr. Moore for about two months when
she was 17 and he was twice her age, showed The Washington Post a graduation card
she said he had written to her. In scrawling script, it wished her a happy
graduation and said, I wanted to give you this card myself. I know that youll be
a success in anything you do. Roy.

In a text message on Monday night, a spokeswoman for the Moore campaign said that
The Post was reaching and argued that the newspaper was trying to write yet
another story to distract from Doug Jones extremist liberal record.

And last week, Leigh Corfman, who accused Mr. Moore of touching her over her
underwear when she was 14, wrote her own letter in response to Mr. Moores denials.

What you did to me when I was 14-years old should be revolting to every person of
good morals, Ms. Corfman wrote in the letter published by the Alabama Media Group.
But now you are attacking my honesty and integrity. Where does your immorality
end?

Some people quickly criticized the president for his endorsement. Paula Cobia, a
lawyer for another of Mr. Moores accusers, said Mr. Trump was being hypocritical
in advocating a border wall to keep out criminals while endorsing a Senate
candidate with multiple accusations against him for child molestation and sexual
predation.

Hours later, Ms. Cobia released a statement on behalf of Gloria Deason, who said
that she dated Mr. Moore when she was 18 and that Mr. Moore lied when he said he
did not know his accusers.

DOCUMENT
Statement on Behalf of Gloria Deason
On Monday, the lawyer Paula Cobia released a statement on behalf of her client
Gloria Deason, who said she was 18 when she dated Roy Moore. It said that Mr.
Moore, a Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama, lied when he said he
did not know the women who accused him of sexual misconduct.

OPEN DOCUMENT
So far, the presidents preferred form of support for Mr. Moore has been to go
after Mr. Jones, whom he criticized as a puppet of Democratic leaders in
Congress. Electing Mr. Jones, he wrote on Twitter, would hurt our great Republican
Agenda of low on taxes, tough crime, strong on military and borders& so much
more.

Yet in Alabama, where the states senior Republican lawmaker, Senator Richard C.
Shelby, cast a write-in vote for a Republican other than Mr. Moore, the ultimate
value of Mr. Trumps endorsement is unclear and perhaps even negligible. Although
Mr. Trump easily carried Alabama when he was on the ballot, the candidate he
preferred over Mr. Moore lost the primary runoff by nine percentage points.

Still, Mr. Moores allies believe that the White Houses backing could help.

The biggest benefit we get from this is momentum and excitement about the
campaign, said Bill Armistead, the chairman of Mr. Moores campaign, who said Mr.
Moore would not attend the presidents Pensacola rally.

On Monday in Auburn, a college town that is the cultural heart of a county where
Mr. Trump won 59 percent of the vote, Andrew Orman said the presidents endorsement
affirmed his support for Mr. Moore. And he thought it wise that Republicans in
Washington seemed to be moving away from condemnation and toward insistence that
Alabama voters should make up their own minds.

Let the people use their own judgment or whatever, Mr. Orman said.

But the presidents endorsement did not seem to matter to some voters, including
supporters of Mr. Trump.
I like Trump, Im a fan of Trump, said Kyle Smith, 20, who is studying to be a
welder and said he needed more time to study the race. But, I mean, Im not making
my decision off him.

Richard Fausset reported from Auburn, Alan Blinder from Atlanta and Jonathan Martin
from Houston. Jess Bidgood contributed reporting from Birmingham, Ala., Maggie
Haberman from New York, and Thomas Kaplan and Eileen Sullivan from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on December 5, 2017, on Page A1 of the

New York edition with the headline: For Moore, a Nod From Trump and Lots of Cash.
Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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