According to a report from AL.com’s John Sharp, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will not be supporting Alabama U.S. Senate special election Republican nominee Roy Moore in his bid to fill the seat formerly held by Jeff Sessions.
“We have a process for non-incumbent races and plan to follow it in Alabama,” Scott Reed, the senior political strategist with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in an email to Sharp. “A candidates’ stated priorities and positions on economic issues have great weight with the U.S.C.C. and the Alabama business community.”
The Chamber had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Republican primary for Moore’s opponent Luther Strange and had a billboard advertising campaign promoting President Donald Trump’s support of Strange in the lead-up to last month’s GOP primary runoff.
The group also has urged Congress and Trump in recent months to “quickly” pass an immigration plan that would reportedly not only allow 800,000 illegal aliens to obtain a pathway to U.S. citizenship but could also trigger a wave of chain migration.
The move by the Chamber comes days after the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, made a similar announcement. That group, which spent millions on Strange’s behalf, said it did not see the need to participate in the contest at the moment given Alabama was a Republican state.
“This is Alabama, not New York or California,” Chris Pack, a spokesman for the Senate Leadership Fund, told AL.com’s Paul Gattis last week in an email. “Democrats would first need to demonstrate this is an actual race before anything is considered.”
Recent polling shows Moore with an eight-point lead over Doug Jones, the Democratic Party nominee. It has not yet been determined if national organizations will get involved to work on Jones’ behalf for the election to be held on December 12.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor