Josie Fitzgerald of Temple Hills, Md., a 60-plus year-old voter and anti-abortion activist who attended the recent Family Research Council’s Values Voter conference, is worried about the turnout of evangelical voters come November.
“I have concerns about people being so frustrated with what’s going on Capitol Hill,” she said. “Like one [conference] speaker said, Congress is so polarized it’s paralyzed. My concern is that people will be too discouraged to vote,” she said, referring to Christian voters.
Whether Republicans keep control of Congress may well hinge on the turnout of Christian conservatives who were so important to President Bush’s victory in the 2004.
But there are questions about just how energized those voters will be this time around, given their disappointment that the congressional Republicans haven’t produced the results–new laws significantly restricting abortion or banning same-sex marriage–for which these voters had hoped.
Also, like other voters, some evangelicals appear to be concerned about the Iraq war. And some in the GOP worry that angry evangelicals may stay home from the polls because of questions about House Republicans’ handling of allegations involving former Rep. Mark Foley’s electronic messages to underage congressional pages.
For their part, GOP members of Congress hope their efforts since spring have been enough to allow Christian conservatives to get past their disappointments.
It was in the spring that congressional Republicans met with Christian conservative leaders, who said their constituents didn’t believe Congress had kept its promises but added that trust could be restored if lawmakers acted on a list of issues.
“I feel much better about the outcome this fall than I did three months ago,” Tony Perkins, the council’s president, told the nearly 2,000 Christian activists at the Values Voter conference. He was one of several evangelical leaders who provided congressional Republicans with a “punch list” of issues that was incorporated in the American Values Agenda that House Republicans announced in June.
The agenda included legislation to deny the awarding of legal fees to plaintiffs’ lawyers in separation-of-church-and-state lawsuits and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Ultimately, the Senate rejected the gay-marriage ban and did not vote on the House-passed church-and-state bill.
But House consideration of that agenda “brought back some trust and confidence,” Perkins told the conference.
“I don’t think the enthusiasm is at the level that it was in 2004, but I am more encouraged,” he said. “Especially after meeting with some [House] members. Some are projecting that the Republicans may pick up a couple of seats in the House,” a position at odds with various polls indicating a possible Democratic takeover of the House.
While Perkins was sounding an optimistic note, other evangelical leaders weren’t so sure.
Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public policy for the conservative Focus on the Family, said, “It’s hard to say why people are less willing to turn out, but I suspect it has to do with the progress of the war and various other issues.”
Still, the group is trying to get its voters out. This year, it has launched its most ambitious midterm voter registration drive ever, Minnery said, targeting eight states that it thinks will make the difference in control of Congress. The states are Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
Rev. Russell Johnson, who leads the Ohio Restoration Project, a religious group working to get conservative Christians to the polls, said evangelicals in his state have been put on their heels by the media and the Internal Revenue Service, which have raised questions about churches’ political activism.
But he also criticizes Republican campaign officials.
“I am seriously concerned,” Johnson said, “about the turnout of conservative Christian voters based on a measure of intimidation from the press and the IRS, confusion about what churches are able to do legally, and some missteps by key conservative leaders who have not marketed their position very well.”
Pastor Bob Coy of the Calvary Chapel, a Ft. Lauderdale church with an average of 18,000 worshipers on Sundays, senses that the abortion and gay-marriage issues aren’t resonating as they might have in the past.
“There’s an assumption, sadly, that some of those issues are already on their way to the gavel or the verdict without our participation,” Coy said.
Instead, he said, his congregation seems greatly interested in such issues as immigration, the Iraq war and the economy.
———-
fjames@tribune.com
