FAIRHOPE, Alabama—The campaign for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court came to town this week as Jefferson County Circuit Judge Bob Vance made the rounds of local Rotary clubs, looked in at Ken & Vernon’s barber shop, and attended a number of meetings with local residents in his bid to best former State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore for the state’s highest judgeship in Tuesday’s election.

“I have been heartened that a good number of Republicans share the concerns I have and the issues that I recognize as being important ones facing the court system and state,” Vance said during a Wednesday interview at The Courier office. “The major challenge is that our courts are underfunded.”

A circuit judge in Birmingham for a decade, Vance is the son of former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Vance, who was assassinated in 1989 with a mail bomb sent by Walter Leroy Moody Jr.

Running for the high court seat against a former chief justice removed from that job after refusing a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court building, Vance entered the race in August after the former nominee, Harry Lyon, was rejected by the party after making several controversial statements of his own.

Moore flirted with a presidential run this election cycle but decided last year to seek his former seat on the high court. He made unsuccessful runs for the Republican nominee spot for governor in 2006 and 2010.

Despite the odds against a Democrat winning against a well-known Republican in a presidential year in one of the most conservative states in the country, Vance has attracted a number of Republicans to his camp and counts several business groups and supporters among his campaign contributors.

Former U.S Rep. Jack Edwards, a Republican from South Alabama, recently threw his support behind Vance, who toured the county this week accompanied by Republican attorney Allan Chason of Bay Minette. Chason made the case that Vance will be better for the state’s economic development efforts than Moore.

“It is not easy to attract business here when we have a public official who might cause embarrassment or headlines that could cast us in a negative light,” Chason said. “Bob Vance would not do that. He would put the state in a positive light.”

That potential stems less from the controversy surrounding Moore’s removal from office than from recent statements he has made in his bid to reclaim the chief justice position, Chason said.

“My candidate has taken a loyalty oath to the Democratic platform, which contains same-sex marriage, taxpayer-funded abortion, homosexual, lesbian, gay and transsexual rights, and supports the overturn of the Defense of Marriage Act and the continuance of Obamacare,” Moore said during a phone interview Wednesday in the kind of statement Chason said typified his recent campaign rhetoric. “We will be in decline if Obama continues his policy of destruction of the families through same-sex marriage and the destruction of our country with socialism.”

Moore challenged Vance to disavow the Democratic Party’s platform and to weigh in on the issues he has spoken against so forcefully.

“Moore is really interested in running for president more than in running for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court,” Vance said.  “The issues he raises—which he has continually raised—are not the pressing issues confronting Alabama's courts.  Judge Moore is simply using such wedge issues to divide us rather than seeking to bring us together to deal with our most pressing problems.

“The only oath I have taken is my oath of office.  Judge Moore took the same oath, which he subsequently violated when he chose to put himself above the law by disobeying a valid court order.”

Moore also points to getting the court’s financial house in order as one of the main challenges the new chief justice will face, who serves as administrator for the state’s judicial system, saying he was the better qualified of the two to address the state’s budget crisis and how it affects the courts.

But Vance said one of the reasons he entered the race was because “when (Moore) was last here he had significant difficulties from his inability to work with the legislature and judges throughout the state. It was not a good time because we were not given the leadership we needed from the chief justice.”

Moore countered that he faced a Democratic legislature at the time, as opposed to having a Republican one now.

“They cut our budget when I became chief justice by $13 million, which was the largest cut ever to that date,” Moore said. “But I kept the court system open and functioning and dealt with the legislature as best as I could.”

Vance also made an economic argument to support his candidacy.

“It’s very important in this day and age that Alabama put its best foot forward in terms of attracting new business,” Vance said. “That effort cannot be impeded by any kind of embarrassments that might give Alabama a black eye. We need to have public servants in Montgomery and Alabama who are mindful of the concerns that Alabama business has and avoid any kind of theatrics.

“We don’t need any more drama. We don’t need to have the Alabama Supreme Court on the front page of the national newspapers.”

Moore said he took a principled stand against the federal judge’s order to remove the Ten Commandments monument and said he is exercising his First Amendment freedom in speaking out on recent issues that he says have already been decided and will not come before the state high court.

“I am sworn to a higher law, which is the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land,” Moore said, referring to his stance on the Ten Commandments’ monument issue. “It was not God’s law I was following, it was the United States Constitution, which allows the acknowledgment of God, specifically in the First Amendment.”

Sam Irby, a prominent Fairhope attorney, also accompanied Vance during his campaign stops this week.

“As a professional and as a lawyer, what Moore did to violate a federal court order offends me,” Irby said as one of the reasons behind his support for Vance. “In my judgment you follow a court order, that’s the only ethical thing you can do.

“This is not a Republican or Democratic or conservative or liberal issue,” Irby said.  “I don’t believe judges should run under any label, but that’s the way it is. What matters is what kind of integrity you have more than what party you represent.”