ATLANTA — Republicans in Washington seemed near panic Thursday in the light of a news report in which four women said Roy S. Moore, the Republican nominee for a United States Senate seat in Alabama and an evangelical Christian, had made sexual or romantic overtures to them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, said Mr. Moore should step aside ahead of the Dec. 12 special election if the allegations were true.

But in Alabama, the fallout was uncertain for a candidate who is considered a hero in some circles for his conservative cultural stances. Mr. Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was twice removed from that office for his positions on gay marriage and a Ten Commandments display. On Thursday, he strenuously denied the allegations the women made about him in on-the-record interviews included in the report, published by The Washington Post.

And it was clear that many in his conservative base were in no mood to desert him in a race for a Senate seat Republicans consider crucial to maintaining their majority in the upper chamber.

John Skipper, 66, a former chair of the Mobile County Republican Party, declared the allegations “total contrived media garbage.” Mr. Skipper said that he would still support the candidate and that he figured most of the Alabama Republicans he knew would probably do the same.