[note: a few days ago, Daily Kos contributor Frederick Clarkson, mentioned in this story, went through surgery for a pulmonary edema and blood clots in his lung and leg. Yesterday I talked on the phone with Fred, and he was in good spirits - especially when we got onto the subject of politics.]
How could the severely damaged GOP regain power in 2010 or 2012 ? The race in Washington's King County, for County Executive, between Democrat Dow Constantine and stealth Christian conservative Susan Hutchison, suggests that the Christian conservative activists who power the Republican Party will try electoral tactics they perfected almost two decades ago. But, as the ad below indicates, some Democrats have caught on to the Christian right's stealthy ways.
From the late 1980's into the next decade, stealth tactics enabled the Christian Coalition to take over much of the Republican Party [see 1, 2, 3, 4]. Then, in the 1994 election, the Coalition played a key role in powering the GOP takeover of both houses of Congress. But the Christian conservative voting base was far from a majority. So how did they do it ? Well, as journalist and Talk To Action co-founder Frederick Clarkson chronicled, in a groundbreaking 1992 Church and State article, they campaigned smart, and dirty, and they used stealth. If the Democratic Party doesn't watch out they'll do it again.
As Daily Kos contributor Valerie Tarico writes,
Next week in King County, Washington, "nonpartisan" Susan Hutchison will be vying with Democrat Dow Constantine for the role of County Executive. The seat controls significant resources in a region that often plays a leadership role in future oriented public policy. If King County were a state, its budget size would be 13th in the country. Economically, the county lives on cutting edge science, engineering and technology: Microsoft, Boeing, Amgen, Nintendo and a host of tech/biotech start ups.
What national precedents is King County likely to be setting in the next go around? That depends in part on who sits in the executive seat. Constantine has track records in brokering anti-sprawl, sustainable development and historic preservation. He’s a proponent of strong, innovative carbon policies. But who is the elusive Hutchison?
A former newscaster with name recognition but no track record in politics, Susan Hutchison is smart and urbane. She shows none of the strange qualities that made voters nervous about Sarah Palin. However, we do know a few things about Hutchison:
- While Sarah Palin seems to believe that dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth together six thousand years ago, Susan Hutchison has served on the board of the Discovery Institute, which pushes "Intelligent Design." Intelligent Design was exposed as a stealth tactic of Christian conservatives, and discredited, in the Kitzmiller v. Dover (school district) decision.
- Hutchison has a track record or donating money exclusively to Republican candidates [see video, below]; but, during the run up to the 2008 election, Susan Hutchinson didn't initially support John McCain. Rather, she donated money to the unabashed Christian supremacist candidate, Mike Huckabee, who during the GOP primary called for altering the United States Constitution - to bring it into line with the supposed dictates of the Bible.
Conveniently for Susan Hutchison, prior to the campaign her financial backers have successfully pushed through a ballot initiative that lets candidates in King County run under the "non-partisan" label rather than as members of established political parties. So, Hutchinson doesn't have to declare her decidedly partisan, pro-Republican leanings or attach her name to the damaged GOP brand.
An October 28th poll shows Hutchison trailing her Democratic rival, Dow Constantine, but such polls often miss the bump that Christian conservatives can expect from church-based get-out-the-vote efforts. Political analysts and pollsters often miss the electoral impact of organized religion, and the trend continues into the present.
In the 2008 election in California, gay rights activists were blindsided by a "rainbow", multi-ethnic coalition of evangelical Christians which helped push through the anti-gay marriage Proposition Eight. Pre-election polls seemed to suggest the measure wouldn't pass, but it did, and the reason was mundane; the pro-Proposition Eight forces had a very well organized ground game and get-out-the-vote effort. After the election, evangelical leaders of the effort boasted they had more volunteers on the ground than in previous election in California's history.
Looking back to another decade, when Bill Clinton's Presidency was undercut by the GOP's unexpected 1994 recapture of both houses of Congress, we can see many of the tactics we can expect to see deployed by the Christian right and the GOP during the 2010 and 2012 elections. In 1991 Frederick Clarkson infiltrated a national leadership meeting of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, and in a 1992 story first published in Church and State magazine, Clarkson described the highly sophisticated electoral tactics the Christian Coalition used to get its candidates elected in Virginia in '92 and which would help power GOP wins in the 1994 Congressional election:
[it was a] rapidly growing, technologically sophisticated religio-political organization, built largely from Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. Christian Coalition activists are working to take over the Republican Party from the grassroots up, while electing right-to-life conservative Christian Republicans to public office at all levels.
They view George Bush and "establishment" Republicans as their principal opponents and believe themselves divinely appointed to take power and rule the United States. I also heard Coalition leaders gleefully describe-from the podium-political activities that are clearly unethical, if not illegal.
....
"We don't have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us," declared Guy Rodgers, the Coalition's national field director. "Most of them are staying home and watching `Falcon Crest."'
"Even in a high turn-out presidential election year," Rodgers explained, "only 15 percent of the eligible voters determine the outcome. Of all eligible adults, only about 60 percent are actually registered. Only half of those cast ballots. So," he continued, "only 30 percent of the eligible voters actually vote. Therefore, only 15 percent of the eligible voters determine the outcome.
"In low turn-out elections," he concluded, "city council, state legislature, county commissions-the percentage of the eligible voters who determines who wins can be as low as 6 or 7 percent."
The Coalition's imaginative executive director, Ralph Reed, describes the group's voter mobilization program as if it were a covert military operation: "I want to be invisible," he told one reporter. "I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."
Even now, almost two decades later, it seems a startlingly sophisticated effort. The Christian Coalition polled potential voters and identified them as either Republican or Democrat. They then asked the Republican voters whether they supported restrictions on abortion and went on to ask what were the most important issues facing the voters' local area. As Frederick Clarkson described, the Christian Coalition used that data to create and mail individually tailored, laser-printed GOTV letters that addressed the personal concerns of each potential Republican voter
If the voter happened to be pro-choice, the letter wouldn't mention abortion. "I'll take the votes of the pro-abortion Republicans" to get antiabortion Republicans in, Reed admitted. In fact, Reed said only 28 percent of his targeted voters identified themselves as anti-abortion.
This signals a significant shift from the grandiose Christian Right notion of a "moral majority." The Robertson forces are a self-conscious minority seeking power through smart utilization of political campaign technology and the institutions of democracy."
And the result ? -
they took seven seats for State Senate and House of Delegates from the Virginia Beach area. One recent Regent University graduate defeated a 20year incumbent Democrat.
As Theocracy Watch Founder Joan Bokaer described, in a 2005 four-part Talk To Action series [1, 2, 3, 4], the role of the Christian Coalition and the Christian right, in powering the 1994 takeover of Congress, is still not widely understood:
Even today, do journalists understand what happened in 1994? The Republican Party won majorities in both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years. I regularly read about Newt Gingrich’s contract with America as the main force behind that event, or disaffection with the Democrats. Rarely do I read about the pivotal role of the Christian Coalition. Today the Christian Coalition, described as a "sinking ship," suffers from severe financial and morale problems. But the candidates it got elected to Congress are still running the show.