Wednesday May 21, 2008

A God Gap, But Not Where You'd Expect

Hillary Clinton's campaign emailed word last night that Clinton's Kentucky blowout was more evidence of her lock on values voters:

There continues to be no emerging trend lines other than the one established at the beginning of the Democratic Primary: American faith and values voters connect with and support Senator Clinton. Tonight in Kentucky there is no difference. Senator Clinton has the hearts and support of Bible and Rust Belt voters.

With Hillary Clinton the much discussed “God Gap” disappears.

That's a pretty sweeping claim, and while it might be at least partly true were Clinton to face John McCain in November (God-o-Meter thinks Clinton would narrow the God Gap but that religious voting patterns are too well entrenched for her to completely close it over the course of a single election cycle) the Kentucky exit polls, like West Virginia's last week, contained little evidence of a God Gap between Clinton and Barack Obama. Yes, Clinton won 66-percent of Bluegrass Staters who attend church more than once weekly, but she fared just as well among those who attend only occasionally, and almost as well among those who never do.

The results from yesterday's Oregon primary told a different story. Despite his commanding 58-42 victory there, Obama took a modest 51-percent of Catholics and 53-percent of Protestants. Those two groups accounted for 60-percent of the vote.

Obama was able to run up his margins by winning big among voters who claimed "other" as a religion or those who claimed none. That latter group accounted for a hefty 28-percent of voters, and Obama won 60-percent of them.

So the intra-Democratic God Gap does exist. And from a general election standpoint, Obama is on the wrong side of it.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, God Gap, Hillary Clinton, Kentucky, Oregon

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 8:22am Permalink Email This Add to:

Tuesday May 20, 2008

Exclusive: Interview with Clinton's Chief Catholic Organizer

Hillary Clinton’s victories in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana gave her campaign a second wind, and largely thanks to Catholic voters. In Ohio, where Catholics made up a third of the electorate, Clinton won them 63-percent to 36-percent over Barack Obama. In Pennsylvania, where one in three voters was again Catholic, Clinton won them 70-percent to 30-percent. As Clinton’s State Faith & Values Outreach Director, Eric McFadden has been the campaign’s lead Catholic outreach organizer for the last few months. God-o-Meter caught up with him last week, shortly after McFadden left the campaign.

When did you join the Clinton campaign?

I worked for them starting in the Ohio primary until now, basically on a state-by state basis.

Why’d you leave?

I think we all know why--it’s in the news.

What did “Catholic organizing” look like on a day-to-day basis for you?

A lot of it was going into the states and setting the table for outreach, in Ohio and Pennsylvania especially. A lot of phone calls to Catholic clergy and lay people and ethnic organizations. We set up listening sessions around the state where myself or other surrogates were talking about Hillary Clinton. It kind of took on a life of its own, with people organizing postcard programs to express support as Catholics for Hillary to fellow parishioners.

We had a huge amount of interest from women’s religious communities. At times it was overwhelming. Some of our surrogates would go to convents and I had not seen that many nuns get together since I was organizing for [the progressive Catholic group] Catholics in Alliance [for the Common Good].

How many nuns were there as part of the Clinton effort in Pennsylvania?

Across the state I would say 400 to 500… We organized them locally and they did some canvassing in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh. Because the women’s religious population is aging, a lot of them did phone banking from their homes. They would do scripts we had developed specifically for them and call into Catholic areas.

Weren’t some of the sisters scared of the reaction of the Catholic church, particularly because Clinton is pro-choice?

We didn’t ask them to call as sisters or to call as Catholics—it was their choice. Some of them identified themselves as sisters, but some of them expressed concern about being affiliated with a [tax-exempt] 501c3 or church [which can’t endorse candidates] so we just treated them as any other volunteers working for the campaign. It was their choice.

Did you have lists of Catholic voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana? How’d you identify these people?

It was hard for us, but there are heavily Catholic areas. We had research down to the precinct level where there would be heavy numbers of Catholics and I would identify those areas and other Catholics would call into that area.

Would you run into Obama’s religious outreach effort at all?

I really didn’t bump into their work a whole lot. This is just speculation, but theirs appeared to be more built around liberal Catholic organizations, going from the grass tops down. Our approach was grassroots up.

I’d read that for your Catholic organizing work on John Kerry’s behalf in 2004, you had to strong arm his campaign into working with you?

It was October 2004, and we wanted to do a rally of Catholics for Kerry in Columbus, Ohio. I secured a union hall and had four local priests and a bunch of nuns and local officials and I said to the Kerry campaign, can you get me resources? They blew me off. I had a producer from Nightline call me up and say they wanted to do a story on me. Once the Kerry campaign found out Nightline was coming, they brought in resources and Senator Dick Durbin. But it took a big show to make it happen.

The work on behalf of John Kerry was kind of like—I had to go outside the boundaries of the campaign to get its attention. Many times I was ignored. This time on the Clinton campaign, they came to me. And I had buy-in from the state directors on down. Everybody believed in it. There was no pushback from anybody. Everybody truly believed in the importance of this kind of outreach.

According to the exit polls, Obama did markedly better among Catholics in Indiana and West Virginia than he had in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Is he narrowing Clinton’s Catholic advantage?

I think it’s demographics. If you look at the concentration in Indiana, Catholics tend to be more in northern Indiana, like South Bend, where there are younger, liberal-type Catholics and less your blue collar working class type Catholics, though I hate to use that term. I’m a West Virginia native. The Catholic community there is not as strong as Pennsylvania and Ohio. You don’t have the women’s religious communities. You have one diocese. Probably around five percent or less of the state is Catholic. I was surprised they even did exit polling for Catholics there.

Will you actively support Obama if he’s the nominee?

Absolutely.

Why is he struggling to win Catholics?

I do think that Reverend Wright hurt him. I heard it from people in Pennsylvania and Ohio and North Carolina. But I do think it’s something he can overcome. He’s taken great steps to do that. But he has his work cut out for him.

What else explains Clinton’s Catholic advantage?

I think it was things like the message on health care. There is not a vast difference between the two. Hillary’s coverage is universal where Obama doesn’t require everyone to have it. I think it’s subconscious. I don’t think Catholics were coming out and saying that Catholic social teaching says this, but it’s in their nature and her plan resonated more…. Catholics feel a moral responsibility to help those in need.

What kind of messaging on Clinton’s part helped her reach Catholics?

The language of the Common Good was one example. The [language of] The Golden Rule was another. And personal responsibility—polling has showed that that’s so important to Catholics.

Hillary conveyed the message of a government that serves the common good. The message on abortion was to protect life at all stages. While Clinton is clearly pro-choice, she talked in the language of rare, safe, and legal. She did not make the mistake that John Kerry made in saying he’s personally opposed to abortion but supports it in his public life. That didn’t work.

It’s been said that Obama talks more like an evangelical, which may resonate less with Catholic voters.

His faith background is obviously different than hers. She comes from a Methodist background and he comes from a UCC background that is more urban. They’re both authentic in where they’re coming from. I’ve heard Senator Obama talk at times and I can almost see the spirit moving in him. But my background is different and I’m married to a Methodist, and if people are used to a certain way they might feel differently when the see Obama [discuss his faith]. It may seem foreign to them.

The conservative Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights beat up on Obama’s National Catholic Advisory Council for being insufficiently Catholic. I noticed the Clinton campaign didn’t release that kind of list. Why not?

We were trying to fit more in the structure of the campaign. Those people on [Obama’s Catholic advisory] list, they’re all great people but when you form a list like that you create a target for someone like [Catholic League president] Bill Donohue, who has an axe to grind with it and it can divert attention away from what you’re trying to accomplish.

What do you think of the Christian literature that Obama’s handing out in Kentucky and elsewhere?

For me as a Catholic it’s a bit in your face, a bit too much. My preference would be to tone in it down. You have to be authentic about it and he needs to talk about it, but people who think he’s a Muslim are foolish. If people choose to believe that, it’s their own fault.

There’s a lot of scholars who say the Catholic voting bloc is a myth—Catholics are a swing vote because they vote independently and not because of their religious identity. So why reach out to them as a group?

Catholics are like any other group—they like to identify themselves. It’s like being Irish or from New York City. When you say I’m Catholic it’s like being part of a club, especially for cradle Catholics. So you want to spend time reaching out to them as such. To go further than that, Catholics will always stand around the issue of charity, helping others. That’s the root of Catholicism.

Comments (7)

Filed Under: Catholic outreach, Catholics, Eric McFadden, Hillary Clinton, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 5:48pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Monday May 19, 2008

Clinton's Prayer for Zimbabwe

Did you catch the New York Times' harrowing front pager last week on Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's crackdown on Anglican priests and worshippers in advance of an expected runoff election there?

Here's the opening vignette:

The parishioners were lined up for Holy Communion on Sunday when the riot police stormed the stately St. Francis Anglican Church in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. Helmeted, black-booted officers banged on the pews with their batons as terrified members of the congregation stampeded for the doors, witnesses said.

A policeman swung his stick in vicious arcs, striking matrons, a girl and a grandmother who had bent over to pick up a Bible dropped in the melee. A lone housewife began singing from a hymn in Shona, “We will keep worshiping no matter the trials!” Hundreds of women, many dressed in the Anglican Mothers’ Union uniform of black skirt, white shirt and blue headdress, lifted their voices to join hers.

Beneath their defiance, though, lay raw fear as the country’s ruling party stepped up its campaign of intimidation ahead of a presidential runoff. In a conflict that has penetrated ever deeper into Zimbabwe’s social fabric, the party has focused on a growing roster of groups that elude its direct control — a list that includes the Anglican diocese of Harare, as well as charitable and civic organizations, trade unions, teachers, independent election monitors and the political opposition

A day after the story ran, Hillary Clinton issued a most unusual response: a call to pray for Zimbabwe's persecuted. Here's her statement:

As the turmoil in Zimbabwe continues after a seriously tainted election process, President Mugabe is employing brutal tactics against dissenters in an attempt to retain power. In addition to raids on opposition party offices and the killing of opposition democracy activists by Mugabe supporters, there are increasing reports that the police are interrogating, arresting, and beating Anglican parishioners and preventing them from attending Church.

“I join with people of all faiths in the United States and around the globe in calling for an end to the religious persecution taking place in Zimbabwe. These offenses are an affront to everyone and, as we know, religious persecution anywhere is a call to action everywhere.

“Zimbabwe's families and communities teeter on the edge of starvation and economic distress while intimidation and violence toward people of faith is being carried out by the ruling party.

“This past Sunday while many participated in Holy Communion, a church service was raided and congregants had to run for safety instead of participating in their most holy sacrament. We, as a free nation, must join in prayer for the faithful of Zimbabwe. In April, the worldwide Anglican Communion called on everyone to pray for Zimbabwe's rescue ‘from violence, the concealing and juggling of election results, deceit, oppression and corruption.’

“Let us all join in this call to prayer seeking an end to the persecution, for the church of Zimbabwe to remain faithful and strong for justice and truth, for an end to the drought that is creating a food crisis, for those suffering from the HIV/AIDS pandemic and their families and the clergy who are weary in their ministry. Let's work to lift up this nation during their time of distress.

“As First Lady and Senator, I have spoken out against religious persecution around the world, from China to Afghanistan to Ukraine. And in places such as Northern Ireland, I have worked on behalf of religious reconciliation to help foster peace. As President, I will continue to speak out for religious freedom and work towards religious tolerance and peace around the world.”

While God-o-Meter gets plenty of prayer requests from the Family Research Council, it seldom does from politicians--of either party.

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Filed Under: Anglican, Hillary Clinton, religious persecution, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 6:48pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Monday May 19, 2008

Clinton Sits Through Adultery Sermon

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Filed Under: adultery, Hillary Clinton, Kentucky, sermons

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Tuesday May 13, 2008

No God Gap in West Virginia?

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Catholics, Hillary Clinton, West Virginia

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 9:34pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Monday May 5, 2008

Clinton Trumpets Methodist Roots

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Filed Under: Hillary Clinton, Indana, Methodists

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Thursday May 1, 2008

Update On Clinton's Faith Outreach

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Common Good Strategies, Eric Sapp, Hillary Clinton, Mara Vanderslice

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 9:16pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Thursday May 1, 2008

Clinton, Dobson, and The National Day of Prayer

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Filed Under: Focus on the Family, Hillary Clinton, James Dobson, National Day of Prayer, Shirley Dobson

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 5:25pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Wednesday April 30, 2008

Clinton Touting Mom's Sunday School Bona Fides

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Comments (1)

Filed Under: ad, Hillary Clinton, Indiana, Sunday School

posted by Dan Gilgoff @11:15am Permalink Email This Add to:

Wednesday April 30, 2008

Clinton's Questions for God

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Comments (5)

Filed Under: Compassion Forum, David Brody, Hillary Clinton, interview

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 8:12am Permalink Email This Add to: