Alabama was supposed to turn Steve Bannon and Breitbart into kingmakers. Now what?

By Paul Farhi December 13 at 5:40 PM

For weeks, Breitbart.com openly campaigned for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. It also touted the kingmaking powers of its chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. On Tuesday, Moore, Bannon and Breitbart all went down to defeat.

The election of Democrat Doug Jones was a stunning rejection of Bannon and the right-wing news-and-commentary website that pushed Moore’s candidacy despite questions about his moral character — he is accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls while in his 30s — let alone his ability to win an election long assumed to be a slam dunk for any conventional Republican candidate.

The Alabama results suggest that a reckoning is due for both Bannon and Breitbart, whose influence and audience grew exponentially during Trump’s presidential campaign. Since then, as support for Trump has declined, so has Breitbart’s traffic, settling back to the 15 million people a month it drew before a spike around the election last year.

“It’s obvious that they’re not gaining ground,” said Frank Durham, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa who studies conservative media. While drawing broader lessons from a single-state race such as Alabama is problematic, Durham said, “Bannon’s showboating wasn’t persuasive to people who aren’t already in his camp.”

Bannon and Breitbart worked in tandem to promote Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge who was twice removed from office for disobeying federal court orders. When The Washington Post published credible allegations of child sexual abuse against Moore, for example, Breitbart tried to nitpick the newspaper’s reporting and discredit Moore’s accusers.

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