God-O-Meter

God-O-Meter

Big Faith Operative for Clinton?

posted by dgilgoff | 11:35pm Sunday April 27, 2008

chelsea.jpgThe Clinton campaign just sent God-o-Meter this picture of Chelsea Clinton worshipping at the Central United Methodist Church in Ashville, North Carolina. Not news.
But the story that the picture’s attached to in the Ashville Citizen-Times might contain some. Check out these seemingly innocuous paragraphs from the piece:

At the church in the morning, about a dozen Hillary Clinton supporters stood outside the church and applauded as the former first daughter arrived in a black SUV with a handful of campaign staffers.
Clinton’s stop at the church was arranged by Eric Sapp, a consultant with Common Good Strategies, a Washington-based faith and values outreach consulting firm working with the Democratic Party.
Sapp said Hillary Clinton’s campaign contacted him for a recommendation on where Chelsea Clinton should worship.
Sapp’s grandparents, Jeff and Lottie Sapp, are Asheville residents who attend Central.

Why might this be a big deal? Sapp’s consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, has been the pioneer in Democratic faith-based outreach since its founding after the 2004 elections, when the Democrats’ dismal showing among evangelicals and other religious voters was blamed for their loss of the White House and of seats in Congress.
Common Good’s roles in Senate and gubernatorial races in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in 2006 were credited with helping Democrats make much-needed inroads among religious voters, and helping them win control of Congress. Sapp is one half of Common Good Strategies. Founder Mara Vanderslice, the faith outreach director of John Kerry’s ’04 campaign, is the other. The firm had planned on staying neutral through the presidential primaries, so if Sapp is onboard with Hillary Clinton, that’s big news. God-o-Meter will look into that possibility and let you know what it learns.


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Previous Posts

Closed for the Season
With Election Day finally having come and gone, God-o-Meter is closing up shop till 2012--or at least 2010. Till then, get your faith and politics fix over at Beliefnet editor-in-chief Steve Waldman's blog. 7

posted 4:32:33pm Nov. 19, 2008 | read full post »

On The Religious Left, Great Expectations
The first priorities for Barack Obama's administration will be the economy and a variety of foreign policy issues. But the burgeoning religious left, which worked so hard to get Obama elected, expects some movement on its issues, including a robust White House office of faith-based initiatives, pove

posted 1:49:31pm Nov. 07, 2008 | read full post »

Howard Dean's Vindication
God-o-Meter wrote a piece for today's Roll Call on the vindication of Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's much-derided 50-State Strategy, which is largely about reaching out to the nation's more religious voters in the red states: Years before Barack Obama showed that a liberal Demo

posted 2:01:06pm Nov. 06, 2008 | read full post »

A Post-Election Chat with Ralph Reed
Amid today's talk that Barack Obama has narrowed the God Gap, God-o-Meter checked in with Ralph Reed, who spearheaded religious outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns and who pioneered such outreach for Republicans as executive director of the Christian Coalition. What surprised you i

posted 3:09:07pm Nov. 05, 2008 | read full post »

More Innacurate Faith Storylines From the Media
God-o-Meter is struck by the number of faith-based storylines the news media appear to have gotten dead wrong this year. One was the line that Obama was poised to make big gains among white votes, especially evangelicals, who were undergoing a generational shift in their political thinking and reexa

posted 11:53:20am Nov. 05, 2008 | read full post »

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Comments read comments(1)
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ShoshannaSue

posted April 28, 2008 at 8:26 am


We love you Chelsea! Go Girl! We love Hillary Clinton and she will be our next President! Thank God! Get on Board Jeff and Lottie Sapp, we need you in this campaign to improve the United States of America. We all know that the Clintons will help improve the face of our Nation. Hillary Clinton will bring the respect that we deserve from the rest of the world and the respect of the government from our own people back during her Presidential Term. As many believe in our Nation, the American people have lost confidence in the current Administration of the United States of America.



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