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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to choose a permanent Senate successor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with both Republicans and Democrats locked in competitive primaries that may have to be resolved in a Sept. 26 runoff.

On the Republican side, a bitter and expensive campaign seemed to favor Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who was appointed to replace Sessions in February by a governor who later resigned in disgrace. Despite millions of dollars in ads, and tweets and robo-calls from a supportive President Trump, public polling had Strange in a dogfight with Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and former state Supreme Court justice Roy Moore. In a Tuesday morning tweet, Trump reiterated that Strange will be great if sent back to the Senate.

I predict that President Trumps endorsement will be incredibly important because people want his agenda passed, Strange told Fox News before heading out to vote. I couldnt be more honored.

But in the final hours of campaigning, both Moore and Brooks attacked Strange as a pawn of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation super PACs have spent more than $2.4 million to bail out the incumbent. At one of his final stops, at a sporting goods store in his north Alabama congressional district, Brooks lit into Strange as a dishonest and unethical candidate who had been captured by the political establishment.

[Past coverage: Alabama Gov. Bentley taps state AG Luther Strange to fill Senate seat vacated by Sessions]

In this neck of the woods, Luther Strange is getting the living daylights stomped out of him, Brooks said, as a supporter waved a campaign-provided banner reading DITCH MITCH. Were going to beat Luther Strange here two-to-one, or three-to-one, not just because they know me, but because they know that Luther Strange and Mitch McConnell have been lying to the state of the Alabama. And we dont like people who are dishonest with us.

Brooks, a flinty member of the House Freedom Caucus who frequently bucks his party leadership, had been the main focus of the SLFs attacks. The most damaging spots have played back year-old footage of Brooks, then a supporter of Sen. Ted Cruzs (R-Tex.) presidential bid, criticizing Trump; evidence, according to the SLF, that Brooks was on the same side as liberal Democrats.

The SLF only recently turned its guns on Moore, who gained national attention 20 years ago for fighting to display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. In 2003, he was suspended from the court for refusing to remove a monument of the commandments; in 2016, after an improbable comeback, he was suspended again for refusing applications for same-sex marriage licenses.

[Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore suspended for defiance over same-sex marriage]

Tellingly, the attack ads against him skirt those controversies to portray Moore as a rip-off artist who added to his six-figure salary by starting a lucrative think tank. At his final campaign stop, speaking to the gun rights organization Bama Carry at a Chinese buffet restaurant in Birmingham, Moore referred to the attack ads as forces coming in from the north to buy your vote, and predicted that his grass roots support would carry the day.

The organization is better than Ive ever had before, said Moore. Money? Well, thats always less. Im being outspent ten-to-one.

The multiple David-and-Goliath stories have rallied some Alabama conservatives, who blame McConnell for Congress languid 2017 pace. In their final TV spots, Brooks displays an Aug. 10 tweet in which Trump blamed McConnell for the failure of the Affordable Care Act repeal push; Moores spot says flatly that McConnells Republicans lied about repealing ObamaCare.

In an interview at one of his final spots, Strange acknowledged that the narrow failure of the skinny repeal bill had depressed voters, even though hed cast his vote with McConnell and the president.

Theyre frustrated, I share their frustration, he said.

Public polling has suggested that the frustration will leave Strange well short of the 50 percent support needed to avoid a runoff. In five polls, conducted by news stations and Republican groups, Strange has never risen higher than 35 percent. The final poll, conducted by the Republican-friendly Trafalgar Group last week, found Moore at 38 percent, Strange at 24 percent, and Brooks at 17 percent. Five other Republicans, led by State Sen. Trip Pittman, came in at single-digit support.

Democrats, who have not won a Senate election here since 1992, see a rare opportunity if the Republicans nominate Moore, or if Strange wins but is dogged by scandal. The oddly-timed special election may depress voter turnout, with a general election not coming until Dec. 12.

But Democrats may have a runoff of their own. Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted two conspirators in a 1963 bombing of a black church, has the support of party leaders, as well as national surrogates like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and former Vice President Joe Biden. According to Jones, Biden had been urging him to make a statewide run for more than a decade.

Theres a real opportunity right now, because everything thats been proposed by the Republicans right now would be devastating for this state, Jones said in an interview at his Birmingham campaign office. Moving the election to December broke this wide open its allowed us to focus on one race, with an energized base, plus a group of independents and people who usually vote Republican, who say we need change, we need checks and balances.

The depleted state of Alabamas Democratic Party might complicate Joness bid. He jumped into the race in May, and has raised less than $200,000, which has helped fund radio ads, lawn signs, and a robo-call from Biden. But public polls, which his campaign disputes, have found him well short of 50 percent and running behind an African American military veteran, with little political experience, who happens to be named Robert Kennedy Jr. A poll from Birminghams WBRC TV station put Kennedy at 49 percent, knocking on the door of an outright primary victory.

The Kennedy campaign has given Democrats a queasy deja vu. As the party has collapsed in the deep South, several establishment-backed white candidates have run prudent primary campaigns, and lost to obscure black candidates who did little electioneering but had familiar-seeming names or appeared at the top of the ballot. In 2015, a truck driver named Robert Gray spent $50 to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Mississippi. In 2010, more infamously, a troubled veteran named Alvin Greene won the partys nomination in a U.S. Senate race, defeating a judge and former state legislator.

Kennedy, unlike those candidates, has held public events, bought campaign ads, and worked in politics as a campaign volunteer and Capitol Hill staffer. In an interview, he said hed shaken hundreds of voters hands, and dispelled concerns that he was some sort of Republican plant.

Alabama voters can be completely comfortable knowing that we dont owe anybody anything, said Kennedy. My name might have gotten us some media attention, but our message is what got us to 49 percent in that poll.

Jones was confident of victory, or at least of making a runoff in which voters would be paying more attention to their candidates. Alabama Republicans, who during the Obama years drove Democrats to near-extinction, were operating as if the winner of their primary and runoff would glide toward victory. At his final rallies, Brooks said that voters really had a choice of whether to let the swamp choose who went to Washington, or whether to send a conservative disrupter to replace Jeff Sessions.

If its a Roy Moore and Mo Brooks runoff, there will be hell to pay in Washington, D.C., said Brooks at one rally, as the DITCH MITCH banner waved from the audience.

Read more at PowerPost

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Alabama Republican candidates court Trump voters in today's Senate primary - Washington Post