U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore recently made his case to Republicans in Tuscaloosa with an unusual pitch: That getting kicked off the state Supreme Court twice made him the candidate voters could trust.

"I've stood for traditional marriage and the acknowledgement of God, and with that, I have been reported to ethics commissions," Moore said. "It's not what you say, it's what you do."

Moore also announced a couple endorsements he didn't receive.

"The NRA has never endorsed me," Moore said. "I even wrote an opinion when no one wanted to do it on a teacher who carried a gun to school. The NRA is a political group. They endorse politicians."

Moore will be the first to tell you he's not one of those.

"I've never been endorsed by Right to Life," he said. "Even though stand for the proposition that God created life that starts in the womb."

Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who has spent decades in the public eye, can afford to make an unconventional pitch to voters. In fact, his success might depend on it.

He's running as a Republican in a field crowded with veteran politicians, including U.S. Sen. Luther Strange and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, both of whom have more than $1 million in campaign donations. Integrity will play a key role for voters in a race already tainted by scandal in Montgomery and unfurling against the backdrop of calls to drain the swamp in Washington. Moore's shoestring campaign flaunts his virtue.

Moore leads the Republican field in name recognition. For two decades, he has waged a high-profile campaign against the federal courts - twice defying orders from U.S. judges. His actions have turned him into a polarizing figure, admired by some as a righteous defender of Constitutional and Christian principles and condemned by others as a dogmatic lawbreaker who doesn't recognize federal authority.

Moore calls himself a "statesman." Many of his supporters treat him like a celebrity - posing for pictures and asking for autographs.

His journey began in east Alabama. Moore was born in Gadsden, the oldest of five children. Although his father dropped out after the ninth grade, Moore excelled in school, becoming president of the Etowah High School Student Council during his senior year.

His academic success was hard won. Moore said he attended three different schools during a single school year. The experience changed him profoundly, transforming the outgoing kid into a student who withdrew into himself.

"It took me several years to come out of that," Moore said.

According to his autobiography, Moore got baptized during this time at the small Baptist church he attended with his family. His life revolved around school, church and a series of odd jobs that included stocking groceries, picking crops and plowing fields.

Moore's shyness didn't last. Attalla Mayor Larry Means attended Etowah High School with Moore and said his friend's deep faith was evident even then, and was not played up over the years for political points.

"None of us had much," Means said. "But Roy had less than most."

Means teased his friend because he always carried a stack of books. Moore told him he couldn't afford the locker fees.

The family had no money for college, so Moore applied for an appointment to the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point. His father, who served in the army during World War II, was proud of his son's accomplishment, but didn't live long enough to see him graduate.

"He ran a jackhammer," Moore said. "And that work killed him."

The loss of his father made his lonely years at the academy even more difficult. Moore briefly considered dropping out and returning home to help his mother care for his younger siblings. Dick Jarman of Kansas City, a classmate of Moore's, said he and other cadets urged him to stay.

It was a difficult time for cadets at the college, Jarman said. The Vietnam War raged, and every week, bodies came back to campus for burial, Jarman said. Graduates knew they were bound for the battlefield. Off campus, the war stirred protests and political discord.

Even during college, Moore's faith set him apart, Jarman said. Although he never pushed his beliefs on others, he didn't keep them to himself either. Cadets had to march through nearby mountains, a grueling exercise meant to push students to the brink. During breaks, most cadets collapsed on the ground - but not Moore.

"He would take his helmet off, stand there and pray," Jarman said. "We would tell him, 'Roy, you know you can pray from the ground.'"

The future judge also showed flashes of deep commitment, Jarman said. Untrained in gymnastics, he decided to learn the pommel horse and eventually earned a spot on the academy's gymnastics team.

Jarman said he was not surprised to see Moore take a public stand based on his religious beliefs.

"I was surprised at how far he took it," Jarman said.

Moore's service after the academy took him to Vietnam, where he famously earned the nickname "Captain America" and the ire of troops who resented his strict discipline, according to his autobiography. Moore said he had to protect himself from attack by his own men. Jarman said Moore served in an area that saw heavy fighting. After discharge, he enrolled in law school at the University of Alabama.

Outsider to chosen one

Moore showed no traces of his childhood shyness as he circled the long tables at a recent campaign stop in Tuscaloosa, shaking hands and stopping to sign one man's Bible. Supporters from the conservative Alabama Republican Assembly gathered at the modest meat-and-three, in an event room with wood-paneled walls and brisk, sassy service. Moore, tall and physically fit at age 70 with a respectable head of pewter hair, sat at a table with assembly leaders and split a plate of fried chicken livers with his wife, Kayla.

Moore didn't write his speech in advance and opened with a nod to the controversial appointment of Sen. Luther Strange. Former Gov. Robert Bentley appointed Strange to fill the post vacated by Jeff Sessions while he was under investigation for covering up a romantic relationship with an adviser.

Strange has said he made no deal to drop an investigation in exchange for a senate seat - but the appointment bothered many of those who came out to hear Moore.

"I'm not a big fan of how Sen. Strange got his seat," said Joshua Wyatt, who said he was leaning toward Moore.

Wyatt ticked off Moore's advantages in the large Republican field, including statewide name recognition and a solid base of support among the state's religious conservatives. Moore has fewer financial resources than his rivals - and has twice been removed from public office. The success of Moore's campaign may depend on how well he can turn those episodes into assets.

Moore first campaigned for political office in the early 1980s, after a tumultuous couple of years in the Etowah County District Attorney's Office. Moore, the county's first full-time deputy district attorney, railed against practices that he felt deprived victims of justice, including early release laws and the practice of delaying hearings.

He launched a 1982 campaign for district judge with a radio ad that accused local judges of corruption. Members of the legal establishment responded with an ethics complaint filed with the Alabama Bar.

The organization took no action against Moore, but in his biography, the former judge said the ordeal hurt his standing in the legal community. He lost the race for judge, left the district attorney's office and blasted off to Texas and the Australian Outback, where he took up kickboxing and calf roping.

Eventually, life brought him back to Gadsden, where he settled into private practice and mended fences with local attorneys and judges. Some of his former foes became his friends. Still, it came as a shock to Moore when his name surfaced in a list of nominees to replace a judge who recently died. It was one of the judges Moore accused of corruption 10 years before.

"God had given me something that I had not been able to obtain through my own efforts many years before," Moore wrote in his autobiography, So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny and the Battle for Religious Freedom.

The Birmingham News noted his elevation to judge in a two-sentence news brief. Joel Sogol, a Tuscaloosa attorney who worked for the ACLU had never heard of Moore before his unexpected elevation to the bench.

"I didn't get to that side of the state very often," he said.

But soon he would. After Moore took the bench, Sogol said the ACLU received complaints about the new judge opening proceedings with prayer. He called Moore to tell him the organization would send someone to record inside his courtroom.

The next day, Moore called a press conference to announce that he was being persecuted by the ACLU for hanging the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. It was the first time Sogol ever heard about the hand-carved plaque, slightly lopsided and roughly the size of a World Atlas, which quickly become Moore's calling card.

From his earliest days as a deputy district attorney, Moore cultivated media coverage - a strategy that paid off during his clash with the ACLU. By making the first pitch to the media, Moore deftly reframed the dispute as an argument about the Ten Commandments.

"The prayer in the courtroom was what we were really more concerned about," Sogol said.

Supporters rallied to Moore's cause. Sogol said he became one of the first politicians to successfully tap into the well of evangelical voters when he ran for the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000 and won, an upset victory against a better-funded candidate backed by business groups.

It was another act of God, according to Moore's autobiography.

Moore famously installed a granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the state Supreme Court building, doubling down on his position that religion shouldn't be banned from government proceedings. During his first term, he issued an opinion in a custody case involving a woman in a same-sex relationship that described gay relationships as "abhorrent" and "detestable."

"Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce," he wrote in that opinion, "an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it.

Means, who was serving in the state legislature at the time, recalled another moment when his friend's obstinacy surfaced. He said Moore refused to persuade lawmakers to fully fund the court system - leading to deep cuts. In his autobiography, Moore said he felt pressured to engage in unethical conduct on behalf of the court budget.

"He can be very stubborn," Means said. "I don't think he'd be surprised to hear me say that."

Moore's ouster drew thousands of protesters to Montgomery. They chanted, prayed even blew into ram's horns. The episode turned Moore and his monument into celebrities and launched a speaking career that took them all over the world.

Moore didn't finish his first term on the court, but he left marks that persist to this day. The floor of the building still bears the scratches left over from the removal of the two-ton monument. One of Moore's leading allies, Justice Tom Parker, ran for a seat on the court in 2004 to continue Moore's work, and has used that position to bolster anti-abortion and Pro-Christian positions. Parker is currently running for chief justice.

Second time around

Moore no longer travels with his monument. On his lapel in Tuscaloosa, he wore a modest silver cross.

His unscripted speech to the Tuscaloosa crowd featured extended excerpts from the U.S. Constitution that he recites from memory, real-time footnotes that unspool between talking points. For the rapt crowd, he cited the second, fourth and tenth amendments - the ones pertaining to guns, illegal search and seizure and state's rights.

Moore is a strict Constitutionalist.

"We've got to know where our rights come from," he said. "They were secured by the Bill of Rights, but they come from God."

He supports President Donald Trump, campaigning on a variation of his slogan.

"I stand solidly with making America great again," Moore said. "But we can't be great again until we are good again."

Moore's celebrity sets him apart from other candidates. At campaign stops, fans present Bibles or copies of the United States Constitution for his autograph. Although his critics often cite his Bible autographs as evidence of a God complex, the candidate says he will sign almost everything and has put his signature on arms, exposed backs and pieces of toilet paper.

Moore has said his elevation to the Alabama Supreme Court was an act of God. By that logic, God doesn't always want him to win. He lost races for governor in 2006 and 2010. In the 2006 election, he campaigned in part against the Republican establishment, a strategy that backfired badly.

Moore returned to the bench in 2012 after another shoestring campaign against heavily favored opponents.

Moore cites his two removals from the bench as evidence of unimpeachable integrity - the act of a man willing to sacrifice power for principle. His latest removal happened after he ordered the state's probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Moore said the ruling in the Supreme Court case was unlawful.

"With Obergefell [the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage], the Supreme Court destroyed the whole definition of marriage," Moore said.

Even though acceptance of same-sex marriage has increased over time, Moore still vehemently opposes the practice.

"When we start making up rights, we take others away," he said. "The Supreme Court created the right of sodomy in 2003. When they did that, they took away the right of marriage."

Randall Marshall, acting executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, represented several people challenging Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage. During 2015 and 2016, a series of conflicting decisions by federal judges and the state supreme court sowed confusion throughout the state. Moore played a key role in efforts to block same-sex marriage, a campaign that continued even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn bans on same-sex marriage.

Although Moore has drifted toward moderate positions on criminal justice issues, he still has an extreme position when it comes to the role of religion in government, Marshall said.

"His theories have been rejected for decades and I don't see that the U.S. Supreme Court will ever get to any position that nears what he believes," Marshall said.

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, Moore ordered probate judges to ignore the ruling. Most of them ignored Moore instead, Marshall said.

"What struck me at that time was that he was basically putting probate judges in the position where they just had to ignore him," Marshall said.

Protesters rallied to support Moore, but not in the numbers that turned out for his earlier clashes with federal courts. Counter-protesters rallied in support of same-sex marriage. Marshall said Moore looked less like a man fighting for his own rights and more like one fighting against the rights of others.

"It does somewhat evoke the image of George Wallace," he said. "It's hard not to come up with that comparison."

The other GOP candidates in Alabama for U.S. Senate are James Beretta, Randy Brinson, Joseph Breault, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, Dom Gentile, Mary Maxwell, Bryan Peeples, Alabama Sen. Trip Pittman and U.S. Sen. Luther Strange.