Communications director quits Roy Moore campaign

The communications director for Republican Roy Moore’s U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama has resigned, according to a report Wednesday.

John Rogers quit the campaign that has been rocked by accusations that Mr. Moore years ago pursued teenage girls for sex when he was in his 30s.

Washingtonian magazine first reported Mr. Rogers’ resignation.

Mr. Rogers did not give the magazine a reason for his resignation.

It was the latest blow to Mr. Moore’s campaign in the run-up to Alabama’s special election Dec. 12 to fill the Senate seat vacated when Jeff Sessions took the job of U.S. attorney general.

However, President Trump voiced support Tuesday for Mr. Moore, slamming his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, as a liberal who is soft on crime and doesn’t support the military or the Second Amendment.

Nine women have come forward to accuse Mr. Moore of pursuing them or making inappropriate sexual contact. Most of the women were teens, although of legal age in Alabama, when the incidents occurred in the 1970s.

One of the women, Leigh Corfman, was 14 in 1977 when, she said, the 32-year-old Mr. Moore asked her out on a date, took her to his house and attempted to initiate sex.

Mr. Moore has denied all the accusations. He also has accused the news media and establishment Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of trying to knock him out of a race that he had been widely expected to win in deeply conservative Alabama.