By Chip Brownlee
Alabama Political Reporter
Breitbart executive chairman and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, long considered one of President Donald Trump’s key allies, will return to Fairhope, Alabama, next week to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. It’ll be Bannon’s second visit to the state to stump for Moore.
Bannon, since leaving the White House in August, has been mounting a nationwide effort to elect more populists and nationalists. Moore has become one of Bannon’s first projects. In September, Bannon traveled to Fairhope to campaign for Moore during the primary election. Bannon supported Moore over the establishment-embraced Sen. Luther Strange. Bannon’s right-leaning Breitbart news has been staunch in their alignment with Moore.
Other anti-establishment Republicans including Sebastian Gorka and Sarah Palin have also stumped for Moore, albeit not since the sexual assault allegations surfaced. Gorka and Palin hailed Moore as the bane of the establishment, a refrain Moore has repeated throughout the race. Since the allegations broke, Moore’s team has blamed them on the “mainstream media” and establishment Republicans.
The rally will be held on Dec. 5 in Fairhope.
“I look forward to standing with Judge Moore and all of the Alabama deplorables in the fight to elect him to the United States Senate,” Bannon told CNN, which was first to report the plans, “and send shockwaves to the political and media elites.”
Bannon’s visit comes after weeks of turmoil in the race as Moore’s campaign deals with three sexual assault and misconduct allegations against him.
One of the accusers, Leigh Corfman, has said Moore initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County. Several other women have said Moore pursued them when they were in their teens he was in his 30s.
Polls have shown the race tight in what has consistently been a safe Republican seat. Most Republican senators, even conservatives like Utah’s Mike Lee and Texas’s John Cornyn, who had originally endorsed Moore, have now abandoned him, along with the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, both of which severed fundraising and campaign agreements with Moore’s campaign.
But with two weeks to go until the Dec. 12 special election, Moore’s campaign hopes to solidify Moore’s base and push back against the allegations.
