WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a growing list of other Republican lawmakers called for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to withdraw from the race if allegations are substantiated that he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl almost four decades ago.
"If these allegations are true, Roy Moore should step aside for all the obvious reasons," McConnell, who backed Moore's opponent in the Republican primary, told reporters Thursday. He said the allegations are "very disturbing."
At least seven other Republicans, some of whom had been withholding full backing for the contentious former state Supreme Court judge, echoed McConnell or distanced themselves from Moore, who denied the allegations.
Other Republican senators weighing in included Jeff Flake of Arizona, David Perdue of Georgia, John Thune of South Dakota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said "the allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying." He said Moore "should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."
In an email, a spokesman for Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said the Republican from Rogers agrees with McConnell. "He believes that if the allegations are true, Roy Moore should step aside -- no ifs, and/or buts about it," Patrick Creamer said.
The allegations, reported Thursday by The Washington Post, recast a Senate campaign in which Moore defeated a primary opponent supported by McConnell and the party establishment and, in Republican Alabama, was believed to be headed toward a victory over the Democratic candidate.
The Post reported that four women said Moore asked them on dates when they were between ages 14 and 18 and he was in his early 30s. One of them told the newspaper that he initiated sexual contact with her after taking her to his home. The three others said their encounters didn't go that far.
"It is no surprise, with just over four weeks remaining, in a race for the U.S. Senate with national implications, that the Democratic Party and the country's most liberal newspaper would come up with a fabrication of this kind," Moore's campaign chairman, Bill Armistead, said in a statement. "This garbage is the very definition of fake news and intentional defamation."
Moore won the Alabama GOP nomination to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions' former Senate seat, defeating incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in a Sept. 26 runoff vote. He'll face Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney, in the Dec. 12 election.
The state Republican Party has the power to disqualify Moore from the election, though it is too late to remove his name from the ballot, according to the Alabama secretary of state. McConnell and other Republicans would have to figure out what candidate would run in Moore's place -- and how to win an election in which it is too late to replace the former judge's name on the Dec. 12 ballot.
Under Alabama law, the ballot cannot be changed within 76 days of an election. But a candidate can still withdraw. The state party can also request to disqualify a candidate on the ballot, even if the candidate wants to stay in the race.
In the event of either disqualification or withdrawal, the appropriate state canvassing boards would not certify any votes cast for Moore.
Alabama law does allow write-in votes to be cast in general elections, as long as the names are for living people and written in without using a rubber stamp or stick-on label. Despite a state law barring candidates from appearing twice on ballots in the same election cycle, Strange would be an eligible write-in candidate, said John Bennett, an official at the state secretary of state's office.
A group close to McConnell that spent millions of dollars to oppose Moore in the primary called on Gov. Kay Ivey and the state party to investigate the allegations.
Moore is known outside Alabama mostly for being removed twice as chief justice of the state Supreme Court -- in 2003 for refusing to take down a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama judicial building, and in 2016 for telling state judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
He also has a history of contentious statements, including writing that Muslims like Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, shouldn't serve in Congress and that transgender people don't have rights.
The allegations against Moore come at a time when prominent men in the entertainment industry, business and politics have been accused of multiple acts of sexual misconduct. The wave of accusations was led by reports from The New York Times and The New Yorker detailing accusations of sexual harassment and assault against film executive Harvey Weinstein.
The 14-year-old, identified by the Post article as Leigh Corfman, said Moore initially approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala., when he was an assistant district attorney. He began a conversation and offered to watch the girl while her mother went into the courtroom for a child custody hearing, the Post said.
Corfman told the Post that Moore spent time alone with her. He drove her to his house and kissed her, she told the newspaper. On a second visit, he took off his outer clothes, along with her shirt and pants, she told the Post. Moore touched her through her bra and underpants and "guided her hand to touch him over his underwear," according to the Post.
Information for this article was contributed by Arit John and Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News; by Michael Scherer, Ed O'Keefe, Karoun Demirjian, Paul Kane and David Weigel of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 11/10/2017