Finding Their Faith - Democratic Underground

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Sun Feb-17-08 12:26 AM
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Finding Their Faith

Backstage at the Target Center in Minneapolis before a rally earlier this month, Barack Obama engaged in one of his pregame rituals: the presidential candidate joined a circle of young campaign supporters and staff, clasped hands with those on either side of him and prayed.

From TIME

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1713269,00.html

(snip)

In 2004 the Bush-Cheney operation did more with religious outreach than any other campaign in history, deploying a massive parish- and congregation-level mobilization effort. In Florida alone, the gop employed a state chairwoman for Evangelical outreach who appointed a dozen regional coordinators around the state and designated outreach chairs in each of Florida's 67 counties. Every county chair, in turn, recruited between 30 and 50 volunteers to contact and register their Evangelical neighbors.

(snip)

It didn't take long for religion to become an issue in the campaign. In the spring of 2004, a handful of conservative Catholic bishops began to insist that Kerry, a Roman Catholic, should be denied Communion because of his support for abortion rights. A media frenzy — quickly dubbed the "Wafer Watch" — soon metastasized, with journalists following Kerry to Mass each Sunday and doing everything but checking his molars for evidence that he had indeed been given Communion... When Kerry and his advisers did reach a decision, it was underwhelming: ignore the story and hope it goes away. A few surrogates could defend Kerry in the press, but the campaign itself would maintain radio silence. It was the same strategy they would employ a few months later when the Swift Boat attacks began. The flaw in the approach, of course, was that ignoring the situation didn't mean the stories went away. It just ensured that the Kerry campaign forfeited any ability to influence the coverage.

(snip)

In May, two Kerry supporters in Erie, Pa., Pat and Kristin Headley, heard that the candidate would be making a campaign stop at the local airport. Excited, they bundled their young son and daughter into the car, bringing along some poster board and markers to make signs on the way. The Headleys, who are Evangelical Democrats, decided to write PRO-LIFE FOR KERRY on their sign to show that it was possible for pro-life voters to support Democratic candidates. But Kerry's event staff thought differently. Hurrying over as the message bobbed in the crowd, a pair of Kerry campaign workers confronted the Headleys and asked them to put the poster down. Only "sanctioned" signs, they said, were allowed.

(snip)

Catholics were just as far off the Kerry campaign's radar screen. In the fall, a Democratic activist and Catholic in Columbus, Ohio, named Eric McFadden approached the campaign about canvassing heavily Catholic counties in Ohio. Democratic volunteers in those areas had been barraged with questions from voters who had been following the Wafer Watch, and they were desperate for materials that could provide a fuller picture of Kerry's Catholicism. McFadden wanted to deliver flyers that highlighted Kerry's faith and the drop in abortion rates during the 1990s. He approached one of the campaign's Ohio field directors for permission, explaining that he wanted to help organizers appeal to Catholic voters. Her response left him speechless: "We don't do white churches.".. Kerry lost the Catholic vote in Ohio by 44% to 55%. It was a six-point drop from Al Gore's showing among Catholics in that state four years earlier. Kerry lost Ohio by a margin of slightly more than   118,000 votes and, with it, the election.