In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama's special Senate election today, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of sexual misconduct allegations.
It was the first Democratic Senate victory in 25 years in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump.
It was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation's already divided Republican Party.
The victory by Mr Jones, a former US attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham's infamous 1963 church bombing, narrows the GOP advantage in the US Senate to 51-49.
This imperils an already-uncertain Republican tax, along with budget and health proposals, and further injects tremendous energy into the Democratic Party's early push to reclaim House and Senate majorities in 2018.
Mr Jones, 63, grew up in the working-class city of Fairfield, just west of Birmingham, an area where steel mills once belched smoke that left a rust-coloured haze hanging over the metro area.
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