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'Ten Commandments' Judge To Run for Alabama Governor

from The Associated Press

Gadsden, Ala. - Roy Moore, who became a hero to the Christian right after being ousted as Alabama's chief justice for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, announced Monday that he is running for governor in 2006.

Moore's candidacy could set up a showdown with Gov. Bob Riley, a fellow Republican, and turn the Ten Commandments dispute into a central campaign issue in this Bible Belt state.

Two Democrats, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley and former Gov. Don Siegelman, are already running. The Republican and Democratic primaries are June 6.

In 2000, Alabama voters elected Moore as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and the next summer he had a 5,300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building. A federal judge ordered Moore to remove the monument, but Moore refused.

His fellow justices had the monument moved to a storage site out of public view. And in November 2003, a state judicial court kicked Moore out of office for defying the federal court.

Moore took appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost at every level.

Since then, he has traveled the country, speaking to church and conservative groups and promoting his book about the controversy, So Help Me God.