(ThyBlackMan.com) When Doug Jones announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in a 2017 special election, he was considered a long shot as a Democratic candidate running for statewide office in the deeply Republican state of Alabama. The special election was held following the resignation of Republican incumbent Jeff Sessions, who stepped down to become the U.S. Attorney General in the first Trump administration.
As a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jones’s most prominent cases in 2001 and 2002 were successful prosecutions of two Ku Klux Klan members who were responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The attack resulted in the death of four young girls. After nearly 40 years, long-overdue justice and closure were given to the victims and their families.
Fast forward to 2017, Jones shocked the political establishment by becoming the first Democrat in 25 years to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. During the general election, he faced Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. The election, which pitted a former judge against a former prosecutor, was not just a race over political ideology. It would soon become a race about character and conviction—the character of the Republican nominee and the convictions of each Alabama voter. A month before the election, Moore was alleged to have sexually assaulted and otherwise acted inappropriately with several women, including some who were minors at the time when Moore was in his 30s.
The Senate race would have likely been a victory for Moore if his character had not become an issue on the ballot. With Moore losing what normally is a safe Republican seat, it showed that enough voters from both parties held to their convictions. While Moore lost the special election by 22,000 votes, Tommy Tuberville won the 2020 U.S. Senate election in a landslide as the Republican nominee against Jones. Will character and conviction become an issue for Donald Trump’s supporters, as it did for Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for Roy Moore?
It appears that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not only showing conviction but also common sense. The Republican from Georgia, who was once one of Trump’s strongest allies, is now calling for full transparency over the Epstein documents.
Taylor Greene is starting to become a voice of reason within the GOP; she is the third Republican who signed the discharge petition forcing the Justice Department to release the files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, besides Taylor Greene, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace were the other two Republicans. The petition now has the required 218 signatures to move forward with the House floor vote, even if leadership opposes it. “Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world,” Taylor Greene said. “Just release it all, let the American people sort through every bit of it, and you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes—it just doesn’t make sense to me.” This is not the Marjorie Taylor Greene we are used to hearing, but we welcome it.
The question remains, how far will MAGA voters and MAGA-elected officials go to protect Trump once the truth is exposed? The Doug Jones-Roy Moore Senate election gives us some hope. Given the questionable character of Moore regarding the alleged inappropriate behavior, a segment of GOP voters maintained a strong sense of right and wrong by denying Moore a Senate seat. But Roy Moore is not a cult leader, and he is not Donald Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has tried everything possible to prevent the release of the Epstein files from being put to a House vote. How far will the House Speaker go once the full truth becomes public knowledge? How far will women lawmakers in the GOP go in supporting the distractions, deflections, and denials that will likely come from Trump and those within his administration?
Marjorie Taylor Greene has already stated she will read the names of Epstein’s accomplices on the House floor. If she does, will other Republican lawmakers be inspired by her courage and conviction to speak out? What will evangelicals do? The evangelicals who maintain an unwavering support for this president despite the cruelty he has shown to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Will the Republican Senate leadership do the right thing only when it benefits their political interests and agenda?
We saw what happened in Alabama, where it ultimately came down to the voters. The fallout from the Moore allegations was too much for many voters to accept. The truth behind the Epstein files may have the same impact on voters in the 2026 midterm elections, and rightfully so. The issue of character and conviction will be on the ballot next year. How each U.S. Senate and House candidate responds to the truth, the distractions, denials, and deflections should be a game-changer for all of us.
Written by David W. Marshall
Official website; https://davidwmarshallauthor.com/
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