Democrats for Jesus: faith-friendly candidates

IN MISSISSIPPI it might not be surprising to hear a political ad on the radio in which the candidate insists that "our children should be able to learn and pray in the best schools in the land" and goes on to ask voters to "prayerfully consider me as your next governor." It is perhaps a bit of a surprise to hear the candidate refer explicitly to "the day I accepted Christ and was baptized." But perhaps what is remarkable in this case, especially for people who hail from other parts of the country, is that the candidate is a Democrat, John Arthur Eaves. At times Eaves seems to be trying to unseat GOP governor Haley Barbour by out-Jesusing him.

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In announcing his candidacy, Eaves opened his speech with prayer and then lamented how his opponents had been skewering the Golden Rule: "The one who has the gold makes the rules." Eaves advocates voluntary prayer in schools and charges critics of the state's public schools with failing to recognize that "we are our brother's keeper." He has blasted Barbour for vetoing a bill that would have cut the state's grocery tax (at 7 percent, it is the highest in the nation) and raised the state's tax on cigarettes (one of the nation's lowest tobacco taxes). Eaves decries Barbour's dependence on the "money changers"--meaning "big tobacco, big oil and big insurance."

Eaves had been asked so often how he could be both a Democrat and a Christian that he decided to pen an op-ed piece titled "I Am a Democrat Because I Am a Christian." In that essay, he presented his program of economic populism as a response to Jesus' command to "care for the least of these." He told Fox News in a recent interview that his support for higher teacher salaries, universal health care and tax reform stems directly from the work of Jesus: "He came to teach. He healed the sick--today we call that health care. He came to help the poor. Mississippi needs somebody who will focus on these."

Eaves happens to be one of the Democratic candidates being advised by Common Good Strategies, a two-person consulting firm that is having an outsized effect on the national political scene by helping Democratic candidates talk about religious faith. The firm was founded by Mara Vanderslice, who served an ill-fated stint as director of religious outreach for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign (her work was largely sidelined). Her partner is Eric Sapp, who brings a seminary degree as well as experience working for Ted Kennedy. Both are young (early 30s) evangelicals--left-leaning evangelicals, of course. Mike McCurry, who served as President Clinton's press secretary, praises the pair as "passionate, hip folks who're deeply faithful themselves, and who're helping bring the vocabulary of faith back into the public square."

And it works. CGS's candidates won all seven of the races in which they were involved in 2006. Senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania, governors of Michigan, Ohio and Kansas, a House member from North Carolina and an attorney general in Kansas were all elected. Obviously it was a good year to run with a D by one's name, but the outcome of those races was not a foregone conclusion at the outset.

SO WHAT do these consultants actually do for candidates? Vanderslice and Sapp stress that they mainly help candidates be themselves and speak publicly about the faith that is already in them. "Our candidates don't all sound the same," Sapp insists. Which is true. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania was a conservative Catholic and outspokenly pro-life before he ran for the Senate; Ted Strickland was a United Methodist minister and longtime advocate for the poor before he ran for governor of Ohio. But for Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, a middle-of-the-road Democrat, it was something new to be talking about God on the stump, as she did during a campaign speech at Hope College in the conservative Christian region of the state. In the end, she performed much better among white evangelicals than Democrats tend to do, garnering some 35 percent of that vote. CGS would argue that faith was in her all along; it just needed to come out.

CGS conducts an extensive interview to find out what inspires a candidate and what made him or her get into politics in the first place. It tries to find out, as Vanderslice puts it, "What would they be willing to lose an election for?"

Vanderslice emerged from the Kerry campaign with some hard-won wisdom. Upon being hired to work on religious outreach, she was immediately attacked by rightwing Catholic groups, who charged that she was ultraliberal and anti-Catholic. Then she had to sit and watch as the Kerry campaign did nothing to respond to the charges. "I learned a great deal from 2004," she said. What she learned first was how little interest the campaign had in religious outreach. She was a "junior staffer without buy-in from senior staff." For the Kerry campaign, people of faith were treated as just another interest group. "Eighty percent of Americans are people of faith. This is something that can't be treated like outreach to hunters, environmentalists or Greek Americans." Party leaders didn't understand the difference between Bill Hybels and Pat Robertson, she notes; they viewed all evangelicals with suspicion. "They wouldn't even return Christianity Today's phone calls!"