11/23/03
By SALLIE OWEN
Capital Bureau
MONTGOMERY -- Respondents to a new statewide poll said they don't think Roy Moore's Ten Commandments crusade should have cost him his job. Many also said they would vote for the former state Supreme Court chief justice if he ran for U.S. senator or even president next year.
Several political experts said Moore's popularity may be spiking amid media coverage of his Nov. 13 removal from office. 13. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary found Moore guilty of ethics violations after he defied a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. He has until mid-December to appeal.
More than 60 percent of those responding to last week's Mobile Register-University of South Alabama poll said they disapproved of Moore's ouster. The poll, conducted Monday through Thursday, has a 5 percentage point margin of error.
His support dropped, however, when respondents were asked whether they believed he should have obeyed the federal judge. Fifty-one percent supported Moore's defiance of the order.
Asked to explain the discrepancy in the findings, Auburn University Montgomery political scientist Carl Grafton said that, in his opinion, some respondents recognize "we can't have a society of laws" when one judge disobeys another judge's order.
After reviewing the poll results Friday, Moore issued a statement. "The poll indicates that the majority of the people of the state of Alabama understand the issue in this case -- that the acknowledgment of God is being taken from them and there is some relationship between the rejection of God and the moral decay we see in our society," he said.
Anne Permaloff said she doubts that people in Alabama have been given an opportunity to fully understand the Ten Commandments case. Permaloff, also an AUM political science professor, has co-written two books on Alabama's political history with Grafton, her husband.
"Most of the public doesn't realize that Judge Thompson never said the Ten Commandments can't be publicly displayed," Permaloff said, referring to U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson who handled the Moore case.
She said Thompson's order hinged on the method by which the Ten Commandments were displayed. The media's "rotten job" covering the case has left Moore's interpretation largely unchallenged, she said.
Moore, who was elected chief justice in 2000, has said he has no current plans to run for political office.
U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Tuscaloosa who has served three terms, is up for re-election next year. A U.S. Senate seat is one of the few statewide offices traditionally considered to be more prominent than chief justice.
Speculation has swirled in political circles that Moore might challenge Shelby and try to take the Ten Commandments cause to the nation's capital.
"Senator Shelby is running for a fourth term in the United States Senate," said Shelby spokeswoman Andrea Andrews after reviewing the poll results. "He is prepared to run a competitive and successful re-election campaign, and he looks forward to representing Alabama for six more years."
The poll found the two men in a dead heat, with Moore garnering 42 percent and Shelby receiving 40 percent. Political experts suggested several factors that should be considered when people weigh the significance of those results.
Moore has received extensive coverage about his signature issue, while Shelby's visibility has been relatively low, Permaloff said. She noted that many people don't start paying attention to political races until just before it's time to vote. Alabama's primary elections will be held June 1.
The Ten Commandments issue matters only if voters can tell that Moore feels one way and Shelby feels another, said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego, who studies congressional elections.
Said Andrews, "Senator Shelby has always agreed with Judge Moore regarding the display of the Ten Commandments. He remains respectful of the right to display the Ten Commandments and believed the installation of the monument was not the establishment of a church or religion."
Some observers have taken Shelby's campaign fund raising -- he has $11.1 million on hand, according to the most recent financial disclosures -- as a sign that the senator is concerned about a challenge from Moore.
Jacobson said, however, that Shelby is just following the typical path for a careful incumbent. "You raise money for the worst-case campaign," he said.
Bill Smith, a Republican political consultant with 10 years experience in Alabama campaigns, said Friday that he had asked a Moore-Shelby question in a poll conducted last month, before the chief justice was removed from office.
The question was part of a larger survey for several of his clients, according to Smith. Among likely Republican primary voters, he said, Shelby led Moore 57 percent to 33 percent.
Permaloff said if Shelby really feels threatened, his campaign managers would roll out the public phase, such as advertisements, earlier than normal. That would give the senator more time to communicate with voters before the primary.
Typically, she said, a candidate would not begin heavy advertising until May.
Some people in Alabama have said they see Moore as a future governor. Moore would beat Republican Gov. Bob Riley in the 2006 race, according to a previous Register-USA poll conducted in the second week of November.
But state residents apparently don't feel as strongly about putting the former chief justice in the White House, particularly if it means replacing President Bush. Poll respondents last week gave Bush a 24-point lead over Moore in a head-to-head presidential matchup.
A leader of the little-known Constitution Party has said he wants to recruit Moore to run for the presidency.
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute, said he was startled at the fact that 78 percent of those surveyed last week in Alabama identified themselves as "born-again Christians."
"Alabama is clearly in a different universe," Ornstein said.
