Onward, Christian Soldiers . . . Into the Clinton Camp

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —  Dea Green, a secretary at Birmingham Southern College, left Bill Clinton’s rally at the school last week contemplating a possibility she couldn’t have imagined only a few months ago: voting for the president on Tuesday.

“I have thought of him as a social liberal,” said Green, a small, soft-spoken woman wearing a large cross around her neck. “But today he talked more traditional values.”

In a year when the Republican political base is eroding on virtually all fronts, nothing may be more striking than Clinton’s inroads among devout Christian voters like Green.

Since 1980, white evangelical Christians have supported Republican presidential candidates more reliably than any other major voter group. Evangelical-based political organizations like the Christian Coalition are among the most vibrant elements of the conservative grass-roots coalition that helped power the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.

But this year, polls show that Clinton is poised to win more evangelical Christian votes than any Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter in 1980--and hold down Bob Dole’s margin among this burgeoning constituency to a fraction of the Republican advantage in the past three elections.

“Clinton has managed to reposition himself in the cultural mainstream, so he is appealing to a lot more of these people,” says John C. Green, a University of Akron political scientist who specializes in religion and politics.

In fact, Clinton’s success at eating into the GOP advantage among evangelicals appears a combination of both culture and economics, the result of both the president’s own systematic courting and Dole’s inability to arouse enthusiasm among these socially conservative voters.

“The Dole campaign has failed to make the case for why, even when the economy seems to be going well, Clinton should be rejected because of his social, moral, and cultural stands on issues,” complains Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, a conservative group that will distribute 46 million voter guides generally critical of the president in churches around the nation this weekend.

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But as even Reed acknowledges, Clinton’s support of family-friendly initiatives like school uniforms, the V-chip for televisions and tobacco regulation--all proposals that caught the eye of Dea Green in Birmingham over the last few months--has given the president new calling cards with socially traditional voters. And Clinton’s willingness--over liberal objections--to sign legislation discouraging recognition of homosexual marriages and ending the federal entitlement to welfare has further complicated the task of branding him a cultural liberal.

“That has taken some of the edge off the antipathy that these voters feel for liberal Democratic candidates,” says Reed.

For instance, David Cauthen, 53, a farmer in Kingston Springs, Tenn., doesn’t agree with Clinton’s support for legalized abortion. But in response to a Times Poll last week, he said he is supporting the president because he likes Clinton’s economic policies.

“Anybody who is not working right now doesn’t want to, because it’s out there,” Cauthen says.

The realignment of evangelical Christians into the GOP over the past 20 years has been a central force in the party’s rise to dominance in the South, even as it has bolstered Republicans in the Midwest and portions of the West.

Though Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist, ran well with white evangelicals in 1976, they have provided Republican presidential candidates with huge advantages ever since. White evangelical Christians gave Republican presidential nominees margins ranging from 30 percentage points in 1980 to 56 points in 1984 and 63 points in 1988, according to network exit polls.

In 1992, that gap began to narrow. Though white evangelical Christians stuck with George Bush more loyally than any other major element of the GOP coalition, his vote dropped to about 60%. But Clinton still captured only about one-fourth of evangelicals, with independent candidate Ross Perot drawing the remainder.

This year, several recent national polls--including surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals--have shown Dole winning just over half of white evangelicals. But these surveys also show Clinton holding at least a third of evangelical support, and thus denying Dole the lopsided margins that boosted earlier Republican nominees. Recent state polls in battlegrounds like Louisiana and California also show Clinton attracting more than 35% of white evangelicals.

A Times national survey completed this week showed Dole clinging to a statistically insignificant 41%-to-38% lead over Clinton among the narrower group of white fundamentalists--a constituency ordinarily even more Republican than the broader group of all evangelical Christians.

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Reed, who has sharply escalated his attacks on Clinton’s record and ethics in recent weeks, says the trend among evangelicals appears to be moving toward Dole in the campaign’s last days. Others note that the tendency of voters to migrate toward their ideological home in a campaign’s last days may cost Clinton some of his gains. But even Reed expects that Clinton is likely to improve on 1992 and hold at least 30% to 35% of evangelical voters.

If Clinton can maintain his level of support among white evangelicals through Tuesday, he will put enormous pressure on Dole through much of the South and in states like Ohio where conservative Christians are a smaller, but still critical, component of the Republican coalition, notes professor Green.

From the start of his administration, Clinton has consciously worked to broaden his base among evangelicals. “It’s been very deliberate,” says Alexis Herman, the assistant to the president for public liaison.

Herman’s office has regularly assembled ad hoc groups of local and national religious leaders to meet with Clinton and other administration officials on an array on social issues, from the V-chip to teen pregnancy. Starting in August 1993, Clinton has held an annual prayer breakfast at the White House with about 100 to 125 ministers from around the country. And Clinton has on several occasions convened smaller groups of ministers for intimate White House lunches. Evangelical ministers have been routinely included in all of these efforts.

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Though this targeted courting has loosened frozen ground, the key to Clinton’s gains among evangelicals has been the broad debate between the parties--and the positive trends in the economy. “Just as among all Americans, there are evangelicals who vote primarily on the economy,” says Reed.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, notes that Dole has also been hurt by resistance among white evangelical Christians to congressional Republican efforts to change programs such as Medicare.

That’s the reason Lou Bodley, a 65-year-old evangelical Christian and lifelong Republican in Scottsdale, Ariz., gives for her plan to vote for Clinton next month. “I like that he stood up to them on that,” she says.

Reed maintains that Dole would have had a better chance of overcoming these sentiments if he gave greater prominence to conservative social issues--such as school prayer and late-term abortions. Other analysts aren’t so sure.

Kohut says he’s dubious that culture could trump economics because his polls showed white evangelicals already cooling toward the GOP during last fall’s budget fight, long before Dole’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for cultural wedges became an issue.

At the same time, even many conservatives acknowledge that Clinton’s own version of the “family values” agenda--has become a formidable competitor to venerable conservative priorities like school prayer.

Social conservatives “have tried to have the market on family values issues,” argues Jill Hanauer, executive director of The Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based group of moderate religious leaders. “But the family issues Clinton has been so successful in talking about really transcend theological and religious lines.”

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Shrinking Advantage

Over the past few elections, White Evangelical Christians spport of Republican candidates has been dropping. This year the trend remains the same, with Bob Dole receiving just over half the support Ronald Reagan garnered in 1984.

Among White Evangelicals

1984

Reagan: 78%

Mondale: 22%

1988

Bush: 71%

Dukakis: 27%

1992

Bush: 55%

Clinton: 26%

Perot: 19%

1996

Dole: 41%

Clinton: 38%

Perot: 15%

Source: L.A. Times Polls