David Barry

A visitor could have traveled through Birmingham, Alabama this week without knowing there is a special election Tuesday that is the most closely watched contest in the country.

But this visitor cannot help but notice how much the face of Birmingham is devoted to enshrining the role blacks played – both as victims and as civic leaders – in the city’s cloudy past.

In 2008, the airport was officially named the Fred Shuttlesworth International Airport, honoring the late minister and civil rights advocate who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King and others to fight racism in Birmingham.

Tuesday’s special election is for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Both contenders are white males well past middle age.

One is a dark horse by virtue of being a Democrat in a state where Democrat has become a bad word. His name is Doug Jones. He is a lawyer and prosecutor who brought up 40-year-old charges against KKK members responsible for the infamous church bombing that killed four school girls in September 1963.

Roy Moore is a man who might be considered a “good ‘ole boy” in the southern sense of that term. except that he is not a man who would seem to encourage that informal label.

There is a huge elephant in the room of this campaign and that is the cloud of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore. He denies all of them.

Moore is a powerful speaker. He has presence, He smiles often. His voice is strong and buoyant. He engages his audience completely. They love him.

That is true of Donald Trump’s audiences, too. At Trump campaign events last summer and fall, it was easy to see a man headed for victory. But you had to be there.

The same may be true of Roy Moore, who has much of Trump’s charisma, if not the depth of Trump’s message.

The twice-removed Alabama Supreme Court justice has the vocal gait of a gospel preacher. He looks good in a cowboy hat.

Listening to his delivery at Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope, Alabama last week was hearing what sounds and looks like a winning team.

Moore’s message is basically anti-Democrat. He is anti-abortion and anti-gay (he says homosexual) in such venomous terms that he could be out of the Old Testament.

It may be that all it takes to win a Senate race in Alabama this year is to be anti-abortion and anti-

gay.

But Roy Moore has more than that.

He now has President Trump, not to mention Mitch McConnell, as well as the Alabama Republican Party and the National Republican Party. He also has Steve Bannon, the Svengali of Trump’s upset win last year.

Bannon suffuses power in a different way. He is not a stump speaker. Few brilliant political strategists are.

Karl Rove, who masterminded George W. Bush’s win in 2000, was no speaker. He didn’t need to be.

Doug Jones is a speaker, a campaigner with a cause that some call the new Alabama, against Moore’s old.

Jones’ campaign standard is his prosecution of the Birmingham Church bombers 40 years after that atrocity. Jones declares total support to the Second Amendment and what is called Gun Rights. That has become one of the strongest forces in American history.

Moore calls Jones anti-gun. He is not, but Moore’s supporters believe that he is. And his supporters believe him. Roy Moore calling Doug Jones anti-gun carries great weight with Alabama Republicans.

So does the support of President Trump, whose endorsement rides solely on the fact that Moore is not a liberal Democrat. Both Moore and Jones shoulder heavy baggage in the final week, but Moore’s heaviest baggage consists of allegations from decades ago.

They are, no matter how credible, allegations. The rule of law in this country is based on the presumption of innocence and the right to a trial by one’s peers.

The allegations were not as crippling three weeks ago. The wind has shifted to the point that Moore pulled ahead of Jones Tuesday night.

Jones’s negative baggage is, first, being a Democrat. Second, being pro-choice. In Alabama, abortion is called murder. In another state in another time, Doug Jones’ unblemished character and his extraordinary prosecution of the Birmingham bombers would easily put him in the Senate.

In 2017 in Alabama, Doug Jones is in a fight to the finish. Jones is seen by Democrats as the voice of justice. In Alabama, that is not necessarily a winning hand.

David Barry is a longtime national news reporter.