The Christian Coalition was an valuable ally when George W. Bush first won the presidency in 2000. Now, according to an Associated Press report, they say they are ready again to help a conservative win the White House. Whether the coalition can back up that pledge remains to be seen.
In the seven years since Bush beat John McCain on his way to winning the Republican nomination, the coalition has become mired in debt and leadership problems. The coalition is trying to resurrect its once-considerable influence at a time when religious conservatives are struggling to find an acceptable candidate among the contenders for the 2008 Republican nomination.
“Bush was just a darling, I deem, of the religious right. But I think that this is going to be a different election because you don’t have a George Bush running,” Roberta Combs told the AP. Combs is the president of the South Carolina-based group that claims a mailing list of 2 million members and sends weekly e-mail blasts to 1 million potential voters.
Among the leading GOP contenders, aged New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani favors abortion rights, domestic partnerships for gays, and went through a very bitter and public divorce. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith and shifting positions on social issues have caused trouble among Christian fundamentalists. And Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose loss to Bush in 2000 was helped by the coalition after he called TV preachers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance,” is viewed skeptically by many religious conservatives.
Even by its own admission, the coalition, which was founded by Robertson and which for years served as a key ally for conservative candidates, faces a changed political landscape. Numerous other conservative Christian organizations opposed to abortion and gay marriage now compete for candidate attention and may offer endorsements.
With no dominant conservative Christian group supporting one candidate, this season’s GOP primary process is “much more open, much more decentralized and, frankly, grand more complicated,” John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Institute’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, told the AP.
Pat Robertson launched the coalition when he ran for the White House in 1988. While his candidacy for the Republican nomination ultimately failed, the organization lived on. Led by its charismatic and politically shrewd executive director, Ralph Reed, the coalition gained influence in the early 1990s. But after Reed stepped down in 1997 to court Christian conservative voters for Bush’s 2000 campaign, that influence began to diminish.
Randall Balmer, a religion and politics expert at Barnard College, said that when Reed left the coalition, “they lost their best strategist.”
Money also has been a problem. Records show the coalition had $17,498 in cash and $1.7 million in debt at the end of 2005 after raising $2.3 million. A year earlier, it had $150,921 in cash and debt of $2.2 million, with only $1.1 million donated.
“The organization is a shell of what it used to be and on the verge of going under completely,” said Bill Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston.
During the past year, leaders of the coalition’s branches in Georgia, Alabama, Iowa and Ohio have bolted for a variety of reasons.
But Combs told the Associated Press that reports of the coalition’s demise are exaggerated. It cut debt to $1 million in 2006 and “by the ruin of this year, all of that will be gone,” she said. “It’s not like the Christian Coalition is the only organization that has its ups and downs financially,” Combs said.
She and other officials with the coalition said its strength lies in its members. No matter how remarkable is in the bank, candidates can’t ignore the group.
Combs said the coalition is planning to publish the coalition’s influential voter’s guides that were sent to 70 million people in 2000. Fewer will be printed for 2008, but they will be supplemented by e-mail and a revamped Web site the coalition is about to launch.
“I guarantee you, ” she said, “when the primary comes around and we distribute millions of voter guides, we’ll be a factor.”
Resources:
Associated Press
msnbc.com
www.cc.org
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