c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-They now are often identified with religious conservatives, but once they were a key segment of the liberal New Deal coalition.

They were well represented among the Reagan Democrats 10 years ago, yet many still count themselves among social activists battling to preserve programs for the poor.

And they are the biggest bloc in the emerging Hispanic-American electorate.

American Catholics are a diverse lot.

Even so, the notion that a “Catholic vote” can coalesce around one candidate or political party remains one of the enduring mythologies of American politics.

“Politicians in this town seem to be interested in pandering to a Catholic vote, which means there is a Catholic vote to pander to,” conservative analyst Robert Royal said during a recent symposium at Catholic University in Washington.

But is there, in truth, a monolithic Catholic vote?

Most academicians and scholars believe traditional Catholic voting patterns began to rip apart when Republican Richard Nixon started appealing to a “silent majority.”

The tilt away from decades-old allegiance to the Democratic Party in national elections continued in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan attracted widespread support among ethnic, working-class voters, many of whom were Catholic and Democratic by heritage.

Two years ago, Republicans scored another breakthrough when exit polls indicated for the first time that a majority of Catholic voters preferred Republican candidates for Congress.

“It seems to me Catholic voters are behaving increasingly like the rest of the population,” said Washington-based political analyst Stuart Rothenberg. “That is, they are independent, increasingly suburban and increasingly Republican.”

John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron and director of its Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, said Catholics have fled the New Deal coalition that formed during the Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the modern Democratic Party by uniting working class voters, minorities and upper-income liberals.

Green said many Catholic voters are conflicted, clinging to a communitarian sense of obligation to the poor, a hallmark of the Democratic Party, but attracted to the Republicans’ condemnation of permissiveness in society.

They have become a “classic swing vote” in national elections, he said, constituting up to 30 percent of the turnout on Election Day, captives of neither party-and prime targets for both President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., the presumed Republican nominee.

Rothenberg said the Reagan Democrat phenomenon is sometimes mistakenly seen as tantamount to a Catholic vote. Many of the conservative Democrats who supported President Reagan were blue-collar ethnics, clustered in Northern cities and, in some cases, Catholic.

Reagan won a 56 percent majority among Catholics in 1984, but that same year 58 percent of Catholic voters favored Democrats in congressional elections.

Larry Schwab, a political science professor at John Carroll University, said Catholic voters are splitting their tickets-choosing candidates from both parties.

“Obviously, there’s got to be a swing vote there,” said Schwab. “There have got to be millions of people out there voting for Republicans for president and Democrats for Congress.”

Going into the 1996 campaign, Clinton appears to be in good shape among voters who call themselves Catholic. A recent Pew Research Center survey of 596 registered Catholic voters showed 51 percent backed Clinton to 38 percent for Dole.

The impact of Clinton’s recent veto of a GOP measure outlawing a form of late-term abortion is yet to be measured. But it is fair to say that his aggressively pro-abortion rights position will cost him some Catholic votes.

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The larger question is whether either presidential candidate can tap into what Green describes as a “distinct Catholic ethos.” This sense of collective responsibility dates back to Pope Leo XIII, who endorsed the incipient labor movement and government activism on behalf of the common good in his 1891 Encyclical, Rerum Novarum.

It is risky to draw generalizations. But Green said many Catholic voters still tend to support an energetic federal government, the labor movement and a societal obligation to the disadvantaged.

Stitching all of this together as a voting bloc in a winning coalition will be a formidable task for Clinton or Dole.

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“It is a faith that in economic matters is the most liberal and on social issues the most conservative,” said Ohio State University political scientist Herb Asher.

The last candidate who was successful in cutting across economic lines and blurring ideological differences to reach the diverse Catholic population was elected president 36 years ago. His name was John F. Kennedy, still the only Catholic president the nation has ever had.

MJP END DIEMER