BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ To the great relief of many, the hardest-fought, most tawdry U.S. Senate race in recent state history heaved to an uncertain finish Tuesday across Alabama.
Polls opened at 7 a.m., and turnout was steady, though not especially strong, as voters took the chance to finally have their say in a costly and captivating race that has become something of a political morality play.
Republican Roy Moore, 70, fought to overcome charges he molested two teenage girls and pursued a romantic relationship with several others when he was a prosecuting attorney in his 30s. He strenuously denies the charges, which publicly surfaced for the first time last month.
"It's been a horrific battle," his wife, Kayla, said at an election-eve rally, where she sparked new upset by scolding the "fake news" for suggesting her husband was insensitive to racial and other minorities.
"One of our attorneys is a Jew," she admonished the battalion of reporters packed in a barn-style reception hall.
Normally, Moore would be considered the commanding favorite in this deeply conservative state, which voted for President Donald Trump in a landslide and hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than 20 years.
But the allegations of sexual misconduct and a history of controversial statements and defiant actions that had Moore twice booted from the state Supreme Court gave hope to Democrats and their nominee, Doug Jones.
The fact the contest was considered even close spurred many partisans eager to take advantage of what amounted to an early Christmas gift: a Democratic shot at a U.S. Senate seat in the profoundly conservative Deep South.
"I'm 45, and I've voted since I was 18," said Chris Barry, who showed up to cast a ballot for Jones at a fire station in Hoover, an upscale suburb outside Birmingham. "He's the best chance we've had since I can remember."
Some, long accustomed to voting Republican, voted for Moore with admitted concern.
"I think any way you look at it, it's horrendous," said Craig Gilbert, a corporate pilot. "If a man is falsely accused, it's horrendous. And if a 32-year-old man was molesting a 14-year-old girl, it's horrendous.
"You have to kind of keep your fingers crossed," Gilbert said before stepping out of the cold blustery morning to vote, "and hope the truth comes out and we'll deal with it at that time."
Jones, 63, is a former U.S. attorney who gained fame for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church decades after the strike against the civil rights movement.
A victory would trim the GOP majority in the Senate to just 51-49, complicating Trump's efforts to pass his agenda and giving Democrats a lift in their uphill fight to win control of the upper chamber in the 2018 midterm elections.
Trump, who also faces accusations of sexual misconducted, largely steered clear of the contest before leaping in headlong as polls showed Moore's support among Republicans holding firm. He weighed in anew Tuesday morning with a tweet urging Republicans to get to the polls and calling Jones a puppet of Democratic leaders in Congress. "VOTE ROY MOORE!" Trump said.
Jones, smiling broadly, cast his ballot early Tuesday morning in Mountain Brook, another well-off Birmingham suburb, expressing confidence in "where we are and how it's going to turn out."
Moore, accompanied by his wife, rode a horse to their polling place at the fire station in rural Gallant, outside his hometown of Gadsden in the northeast part of the state. It was the same thing he did in September, when he beat interim Republican Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary and thus, Moore suggested, good luck.
The special election is being held to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions resigned to become Trump's attorney general.
While the two candidates were plainly happy to vote for themselves, others were less inspired. For all the national and even international attention, turnout was forecast to be a modest 25 percent or so of eligible voters.
"One has beliefs that don't line up with mine, and the other is dishonest," said Phil Smith, 52, a small business owner who wrote in a name he declined to say. "I'm just glad it's over."
He was far from alone.
The allegations have drawn national attention and no small amount of disparagement of Alabama, its history, its voters and their judgment. That condescension along with an unceasing barrage of negative advertising, robo-calls and attack mailers left many feeling besieged, angered and fatigued.
While the Senate race has been deeply divisive, there seemed a broad consensus Tuesday on thing: gladness the campaigning was about to end.
"It's like the devil or the deep blue sea," said Republican Ann Heitz, a Hoover retiree who declined to give her age or say for whom she voted. "I put the TV on mute, I didn't answer the phone if I didn't recognize the number and I threw out the mail.
"There is no good outcome to this for me," she said, her faced curled in a scowl. "I'm disgusted by the whole thing."
