Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore appears to have kept much of his core support despite damaging allegations that he made sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl while he was a 32-year-old attorney.
One Moore supporter, an elderly Alabama woman named Dottie Finch, told CNN that she doesn’t believe the allegations are true. Even if the allegations are true, Finch said, she would be prepared to forgive Moore if he has repented.
“At first, you know, I really wasn’t sure how I felt about the situation, but then I look at it this way: I don’t have the best past,” said Finch, who works in the kitchen at a local barbecue restaurant.
“If he — he went to the Lord and asked for forgiveness for that and hasn’t done anything like that in — since then, I believe that if the good lord’s forgiven him, as a Christian I have to forgive him also,” she said.
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A survey of likely voters on Thursday — the same day that the Washington Post reported the allegations against Moore — showed Moore tied with Democrat Senate candidate Doug Jones. A majority of Republicans in Alabama, a Republican stronghold, still plan to vote for Moore.
Four different women have come forward and said that Moore pursued them romantically while they were teenagers. One of the women, Leigh Corfman, claimed that Moore brought her back to his home, undressed both himself and Corfman before guiding her hand to touch his genitalia over his underwear.
Moore has denied the allegations.