c. 2007 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ One day last January, Tamara Scott was leading her children through music lessons in her Norwalk, Iowa, home when the phone rang. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was on the line, wanting to talk politics.
The children giggled when they heard Scott exchange her stern “Mom voice” for a more polite tone. But the call itself, which lasted about 40 minutes, wasn’t all that odd.
Looking to amass support from social conservatives ahead of Iowa’s critical January caucuses, nearly every Republican presidential candidate has courted Scott, who directs the state’s chapter of Concerned Women for America. And with good reason.
Evangelicals and social conservatives like Scott make up the largest bloc of Iowa caucus voters _ between 50 and 60 percent, according to Chuck Laudner, a spokesman for the state GOP.
While Scott says she and her CWA chapter won’t endorse a candidate, the more than 40 CWA prayer groups sprinkled throughout the state will be sure to speak out on the issues.
“When a politician comes out with an idea or a platform,” Scott said, “we take it to God’s word and say, `How does this measure up?”’
Since the late 1970s, Christian conservatives’ impression of how candidates measure up has been increasingly important to the GOP. White evangelical Protestants form one-fifth of the total electorate and cast one out of every three Republican votes, according to the Pew Research Center on People & the Press.
“A solid plurality of the Republican Party is made up of people who are in church on Sunday and in the voting booth on Tuesday,” said Gary Bauer, an early leader of the Religious Right and former presidential candidate.
Moreover, “in the last 25 to 30 years, those same voters have had even greater impact in primaries and caucuses. They tend to be more motivated and show up in disproportionate numbers,” according to Bauer, who now heads a Washington political action committee.
As Republican candidates vie for evangelicals’ support, Religion News Service sought to identify the religious leaders who’ll play major roles during the primary elections, with special weight given to those active in states with early primaries and caucuses. After dozens of interviews with conservative opinion makers, grass-roots activists and political scientists, RNS winnowed the list of Religious Right power brokers to 10 people.
They don’t squeeze into neat categories. Some are media moguls, others are Washington insiders, still others are moms with a passion for politics and prayer. They are united by one thing: get in their good graces, and a candidate has the chance to go far _ maybe even to the White House.
_ Broadcaster and psychologist James Dobson may be the most trusted evangelical leader since Billy Graham, with a reported 220 million people worldwide tuning in to his radio show. Since retiring as president of Focus on the Family in 2003, Dobson, who turns 71 on April 21, has been flexing his muscles in partisan politics with increasing regularity, campaigning for favored candidates and lambasting those he doesn’t like over the airwaves.
_ Michael Farris, 56, is founder and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College. Come “Super Tuesday” on Feb. 5, when about two dozen states are expected to hold primaries, and campaign resources are stretched thin, Farris and the 80,000 well-organized HSLDA families dotting all 50 states can give any campaign a huge push. “He’s got a network of home-schoolers that will do anything for him. It’s amazing,” said GOP strategist Paul Weyrich, an architect of the Religious Right.
_ Enormously respected and eminently quotable, Oxford-educated Richard Land plays political guru for the nation’s 16 million Southern Baptists. With the early campaign’s focus on religion and divorces, Land, 60, has been outspoken in declaring what is acceptable in a candidate (Mormonism) and what is not (infidelity).
_ Pam Olsen, president of the Florida Prayer Network, thinks God delivered the Sunshine State to George W. Bush in 2004. But as chairwoman of the Bush campaign’s outreach to Florida evangelicals, this 52-year-old mother of four also had something to do with it. A close friend of former Gov. Jeb Bush, Olsen enlisted pastors and organizers in each of the state’s 67 counties and relentlessly pushed conservative pastors to “stand up and preach righteousness.”
_ In the vanguard of a new generation of megachurch pastors who link spiritual renewal to political activism, Rod Parsley, 50, leads the 12,000-member World Harvest Church in the battleground state of Ohio. Through his Center for Moral Clarity and Reformation Ohio, Parsley is leading efforts to get religious conservatives registered and conservative pastors preaching politics.
_ As head of the Family Research Council, the most powerful Christian lobby in Washington, Tony Perkins, 44, pushes the religious right’s agenda on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But Perkins’ influence is felt beyond the Beltway as well. FRC’s in-house intellectuals help shape the conservative agenda and the group’s political organizers buttress dozens of state-based FRC and Focus on the Family affiliates.
_ “If Steve Scheffler isn’t one of your first three visits when you come to Iowa, you’re already beaten,” said Laudner, the Iowa GOP spokesman. Scheffler, 58, heads the Iowa Christian Alliance, the most active religious group in the Hawkeye State. Aside from the candidate forum the ICA is co-hosting in June, a good number of the phone-bankers, campaign literature droppers and door-knockers are mobilized by the ICA.
_ McCain isn’t the only candidate burning up Tamara Scott’s phone line. The 44-year-old director of Iowa’s chapter of Concerned Women for America has heard from a pack of other Republican campaigns as well. Scott has the political experience _ she co-chaired President Bush’s outreach to Iowa social conservatives in 2004 _ and the connections to open doors across the state. Already, she’s organized more than a dozen meetings between small groups and candidates. Plus, she provides a critical link to CWA’s 32 other state chapters and its vast “prayer action” network.
_ Jay Sekulow, 50, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and national radio talk show host, has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court. But his toughest challenge may be convincing social conservatives that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the real deal. When the well-connected Sekulow, a close ally of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, bestowed his blessing on Romney’s campaign, it knocked down walls between the Mormon candidate and evangelicals.
_ Tucked away in Tupelo, Miss., Don Wildmon plays down his political reach. But millions of Christians listen to this soft-spoken Southerner pontificate about politics and society on one of the 185 radio stations that his American Family Association owns across 36 states. Wildmon, 69, also convened the first meeting of the Arlington Group, bringing dozens of powerful religious and conservative leaders into the same war room for the first time.
Most of the people on this “top 10” list have already been courted by GOP presidential candidates, though none except Sekulow is known to have signed on with a particular campaign.
With questions about each candidate’s conservative credentials, the courtship period may last quite a while, according to Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland megachurch pastor and member of the Arlington Group. In the absence of a clear frontrunner, evangelical leaders may be more spoilers than kingmakers, Jackson said.
Others cautioned that it’s early in the campaign and engaging powerful social conservatives and evangelicals takes time.
“There’s a fair amount of ego stroking in this process,” said Ralph Reed,the conservative activist who ran President Bush’s outreach to evangelicals during the 2004 campaign. “People need to know that you care and want them on the team.”
KRE/RB END BURKE
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Also note timing element in 12th graf: Dobson’s upcoming birthday (April 21).
