Vance entered the final week of the campaign with more than
$200,000 in cash and more money pouring in. He was ready to launch a new ad
campaign and possibly has more in the works before the Nov. 6 general election.
On Halloween, he dropped $144,000 on another media campaign,
financial disclosure reports show. A-VOTE, the Alabama teachers’ union
political action committee, dropped 50 grand on the candidate Oct. 31,
dominating the $60,510 that Vance raked in that day, according to disclosures,
which now must be filed daily until Election Day. Vance ended the day with
$121,000.
Moore had only $33,000 available going into All Saints’ Day,
as his campaign has spent money practically as fast as it has come in – and
even then it has relied on loans to stay solvent.
But Moore has plenty working for him in his bid to resume
leadership of the state court system and its high court – a return to the post
he lost in 2003 when he was kicked out of office for refusing to follow a
federal judge’s order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the
state judicial building.
It may be negative to some and positive to others, but Moore
has name recognition. He is running in a decidedly red state on a day President
Barack Obama seeks re-election. Moore outright won the primary against two
mainstream Republicans when the state’s ultra-conservative base turned out in
support of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential
nomination. Even though Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination, voters in
Alabama love to vote straight-party tickets, so a vote for a Republican
presidential candidate usually automatically translates into a vote for the
Republican running for chief justice.
But the Alabama Republican Party – especially the
considerable money behind it – never embraced Moore. He and Justice Tom Parker
aren’t considered ultra-friendly to corporate interests when compared to their
mainstream Republican counterparts. The Business Council of Alabama – one of
the top donors nationally in state Supreme Court races – completely bowed out
of the 2012 chief justice race. In the last month alone of the 2006 campaign (the
last time the chief justice seat was on the ballot) the BCA’s political action
committee, Progress PAC, gave the Republican chief justice nominee $275,000.
Many in the Republican Party consider Moore an embarrassment,
who brought attention to Alabama for what they consider to be the wrong
reasons. And after Moore was removed from office for disrespecting the law, the
thought of putting him back in charge of the judicial system doesn’t feel right
to many. Oddly, Alabama Republican voters twice soundly rejected Moore in
gubernatorial primaries.
Vance has gotten money from the usual Democratic backers, as
well as a considerable cross-over funding from typical Republican backers including
legal corporate defense, nursing home and insurance interests. On Monday, three
former Republican justices endorsed Vance, including current Justice Tom
Woodall, who is not seeking re-election because he has passed the state
mandatory retirement age.
But while Vance is highly respected in the legal field, he
has little name recognition statewide. It didn’t help that his campaign didn’t
start until Aug. 20, after the party booted lone qualifier Harry Lyon for what
party officials considered non-judicial comments he posted online. Typically, a
candidate without primary opposition would have had months to air “get-to-know
me” ads, trot out some issues ads in October and maybe even get down and dirty
in the last couple of weeks before the election.
Vance has had to make a last-minute introduction to a state
of 4.8 million in his effort to convince a majority among 2.7 million potential
voters to pick him out of a crowd of names on a presidential-year ballot. While
he’s hit the airwaves hard, it may not be enough in a state where everybody
knows Roy’s name.
