The Dems Finally Get Religion

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The campaign's p.r. problems weren't any better at the local level. In May, two Kerry supporters in Erie, Pa., Pat and Kristin Headley, heard that the candidate would be making a campaign stop at the local airport. Excited, they bundled their young son and daughter into the car, bringing along some poster board and markers to make signs on the way. The Headleys, who are Evangelical Democrats, decided to write PRO-LIFE FOR KERRY on their sign to show that it was possible for pro-life voters to support Democratic candidates. But Kerry's event staff thought differently. Hurrying over as the message bobbed in the crowd, a pair of Kerry campaign workers confronted the Headleys and asked them to put the poster down. Only "sanctioned" signs, they said, were allowed.

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When John Edwards joined the ticket as the vice-presidential nominee in the summer, the campaign could have used the North Carolina Methodist much in the same way that Al Gore's campaign dispatched Joseph Lieberman to engage religious voters in 2000. Edwards carried with him a leather-bound copy of The Purpose-Driven Life, a popular devotional book by the Evangelical author and megachurch pastor Rick Warren. Edwards' copy was worn from daily reading, a discipline he shared with tens of millions of other Americans who owned the book.

But voters never learned about the vice-presidential candidate's religious reading habits. While G.O.P. strategists trumpeted the fact that Bush started each morning with a reading from a book of essays trendy in Evangelical circles, Democrats were largely oblivious to the existence of Evangelical culture. At one point during the summer of 2004, Terry McAuliffe was actually at the same event as Warren, and the two were introduced. With a good-natured smile but a blank stare, McAuliffe stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Rick!" the Democratic National Committee chairman said. "And what do you do?"

Catholics were just as far off the Kerry campaign's radar screen. In the fall, a Democratic activist and Catholic in Columbus, Ohio, named Eric McFadden approached the campaign about canvassing heavily Catholic counties in Ohio. Democratic volunteers in those areas had been barraged with questions from voters who had been following the Wafer Watch, and they were desperate for materials that could provide a fuller picture of Kerry's Catholicism. McFadden wanted to deliver flyers that highlighted Kerry's faith and the drop in abortion rates during the 1990s. He approached one of the campaign's Ohio field directors for permission, explaining that he wanted to help organizers appeal to Catholic voters. Her response left him speechless: "We don't do white churches."

When Kerry did finally deliver a thoughtful speech about his faith and values, it took place little more than a week before the election. And because of staff concerns about abortion protesters, the Senator gave his faith talk not at a Catholic university in Ohio, as originally scheduled, but at a Jewish senior center in Florida, with little fanfare. Nine days later, Kerry lost the Catholic vote in Ohio by 44% to 55%. It was a six-point drop from Al Gore's showing among Catholics in that state four years earlier. Kerry lost Ohio by a margin of slightly more than 
 118,000 votes and, with it, the election.

Near the end of the Democratic presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., last month, Obama paused to offer some advice to his party. "There have been times," he said, "when our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to Evangelicals because the assumption was, well, they don't agree with us on choice, or they don't agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn't show up." That, he argued, was a grave mistake, and it's one reason he and Clinton have empowered Evangelicals within their own campaigns. Instead of avoiding Catholic voters, they've initiated new discussions about abortion. Instead of silencing pro-life supporters, they've encouraged Democrats to show tolerance and respect. And they're both on a first-name basis with Rick Warren.

Adapted from The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap. Copyright 2008 by Amy Sullivan. To be published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Visit www.thepartyfaithfulbook.com.

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