The summer he was 19 years old, after his freshman year at the University of Alabama, Doug Jones worked in the cotton tie mill at the U.S. Steel plant in Fairfield.

The thin steel bands used for tying cotton bales would sometimes get tangled as they came through the production line. One day, a piece of steel went flying off the machinery and hit Jones right between his eyes.

Blood began spewing. "There was a stream of blood coming from my forehead about this big around," Jones said, reaching out with his right thumb and index finger in a circle about the size of a nickel. "It could have hit me in the eyes."

He was rushed to Lloyd Noland Hospital in Fairfield, where a doctor stitched his wound shut. Then he thought about the steel mill's safety record. "I don't remember how many stitches I got," Jones said. "I just remember rushing back to work to sweep or whatever so we didn't lose any hours for an industrial accident."

The faint jagged scar, about an inch long, is still visible between his eyebrows. It's the mark of a blue-collar background that the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama can draw on in his appeal for votes in the Dec. 12 special election. He will oppose the Republican candidate, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

That blue-collar upbringing gives Jones an insight into what Alabama needs, his supporters say.

"Doug has that foundation," said Rick Bragg, a professor of journalism at the University of Alabama and longtime friend who has agreed to speak on Jones' behalf at a fundraiser in Baldwin County in October. "He understands what people are going through, have gone through. His view of the world is affected by that, that he has that foundation. His people were rooted in that culture."

Jones was born at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham on May 4, 1954. He grew up in Fairfield. His father and grandfather worked for U.S. Steel.

The summer of 1973 was the only summer Jones worked at U.S. Steel. That accident focused him on his goal. "I just studied a lot after that," Jones said. Being a lawyer offered a more promising future, and a way to help people.

Jones graduated from the University of Alabama and then Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.

Jones, 63, former U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Alabama, often points to the prosecution of former Ku Klux Klansmen Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry as the defining achievement in his career. They were convicted of murder for killing four young girls in the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Jones led the prosecution decades after the bombing. Blanton was convicted in 2001, the first conviction in the bombing since Robert Chambliss in 1977. Jones was a special prosecutor in the Cherry trial, in 2002.

Jones was appointed U.S. Attorney in Birmingham in 1997 by then-President Bill Clinton. Before his appointment, the FBI had already re-opened the 1963 bombing case and laid the groundwork. Jones presented the cases in court.

"What struck me more than anything was this wrongdoing that struck at the heart of everyone, this terrible thing, he took it personally," said Bragg, who covered the trial as a reporter for The New York Times. "It broke his heart. He wasn't just an officer of the court. This was something that broke his heart, as it should have broken everyone's heart. Watching him put the case on, I thought, this guy is smart: smart and a good heart to boot."

The courtroom drama included testimony from Sarah Collins Rudolph, often called "the fifth little girl," who survived the bombing that killed her sister, Addie Mae.

"There were times that made you grit your teeth and times that made you relieved that finally, enough good people pushed hard enough to try to erase that legacy," Bragg said. "You can't erase the crime and you can't bring the little girls back and mend the hearts of the mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers and the city. You can try to find justice in it. Doug did that. It was so effective the way he evoked images of that day."

During the prosecution, Jones became close friends with Jefferson County Commissioner Chris McNair, the father of Denise McNair, one of the girls killed in the church bombing. After Jones left office, Republican U.S. Attorney Alice Martin would prosecute McNair and other commissioners for corruption connected to the Jefferson County sewer scandal. McNair went to prison. Jones served as McNair's defense attorney, and worked to get him an early release.

While U.S. attorney, besides the church bombing, Jones also worked on the indictment of Birmingham abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph, whose 1998 attack killed an off-duty police officer. Rudolph was convicted after 2001 when Jones left office.

Jones and his wife, Louise, have three grown children: sons Christopher and Carson Jones, and daughter Courtney Andrews, who has two daughters.

Jones bristles at any suggestion that Roy Moore has a special claim on morality and faith in this election. Jones has been a member of Canterbury United Methodist Church in Mountain Brook for more than 33 years, he said.

"We have our values too," Jones said. "I go to church. I'm a Christian. I have as many people of faith that have been reaching out to me about this campaign. Because you can be an extremist. You can take everything to an extreme, and no one really wants that...They want someone who cares about all people, not just a select few.... That's what I think the teachings of religion are, is the caring about the least of these, the caring about all people, and making sure there's a fairness to everything."

Jones said he has raised more than $1 million for his campaign, "and it's going up every day."

The contrasts between him and Moore are stark and obvious, he said.

"My history has been as a U.S. attorney, trying to represent all people, to try to bring people together, whether it's the civil rights cases that I've done, working for equality, working for fairness, and I think what you've seen from the other side is someone that has more of a personal agenda, and lets that personal agenda get in the way of the rule of law, and has been removed from office twice."

Jones has promised to run on "kitchen table issues" such as creating better healthcare and more jobs. Moore has staked out a career on "acknowledging God" by defying a U.S. Supreme Court order allowing same-sex marriage and fighting to keep a giant stone monument of the Ten Commandments on display in the state Judicial Building. He was removed from office after both those stands.

Among the many social issues the candidates would differ on: Jones is pro-choice; Moore is strongly anti-abortion.

In a solidly Republican state that went for President Donald Trump, winning a statewide election in Alabama as a Democrat remains a large obstacle.

Moore led the Republican primary with 164,524 votes out of 423,282 votes cast. He won the runoff with 262,204 of 480,270 votes cast over U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed by former Gov. Robert Bentley to fill the seat vacated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones won the Democratic primary with 109,105 votes of 165,006 votes cast. That leaves a lot of votes to make up in the general election.

"A large segment of Luther's vote will go to Doug Jones," said historian Wayne Flynt. "There would have to be a huge turnout of black voters and an erosion of Roy Moore voters."

Despite the long odds, Moore has vulnerabilities, Flynt said.

"The problem with Roy Moore is he's too extreme for even many people in Alabama," Flynt said. "His core beliefs are not offensive to them, but the idea he would impose those beliefs on others without their consent, is."

Jones notes that before the 1986 election of Guy Hunt, the first Republican governor in Alabama since Reconstruction, people thought it was impossible for Republicans to win a statewide election. That's flipped.

"Times change," Jones said. "People change. The dynamics of the electorate change, the dynamics of the issues change. I think we are at a very important point in the state's history, where people are going to start looking seriously at issues."

The last Democrat to win statewide in Alabama was Lucy Baxley in 2008, when she was elected president of the Alabama Public Service Commission. The last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in Alabama was Richard Shelby, who won as a Democrat in 1992 and later switched his affiliation to Republican.

To summon the appropriate biblical imagery, it's a David and Goliath situation, with Moore in the role of Goliath. Jones knows what it's like to take a shot between the eyes. This time he hopes to deliver one.

Jones, with his strong credentials on civil rights issues, offers a chance for redemption for Alabama in the national conversation, Flynt said.

"The state is having image problems," Flynt said. "Electing Doug Jones would immediately and dramatically change the image."

Update: Doug Jones won the Dec. 12 special election for U.S. Senate.