NEWS STORY: Kerry Advisers Say Campaign Fell Short On Religion, Urge Greater Party Effort

c. 2004 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly WASHINGTON _ Operatives hired to give Sen. John Kerry guidance on religious issues say the campaign fell short in linking the presidential candidate’s political vision to deeply held religious values and in mobilizing faith-based voters. “You don’t get what you don’t work for,” Mara Vanderslice, the Kerry campaign’s director […]

c. 2004 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

WASHINGTON _ Operatives hired to give Sen. John Kerry guidance on religious issues say the campaign fell short in linking the presidential candidate’s political vision to deeply held religious values and in mobilizing faith-based voters.

“You don’t get what you don’t work for,” Mara Vanderslice, the Kerry campaign’s director of religious outreach, said in an exclusive interview with the PBS television program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” airing across the country this weekend.


At the same time, she said was excited about the positive results of bringing people of faith into the campaign.

“I think we’ve pioneered a new direction for the Democrats,” she said, adding that there is a “whole flood of … religious people that want a place at the table in the Democratic Party.”

“It was a fledgling effort,” said Mike McCurry, White House press secretary during the Clinton administration and perhaps the most senior Kerry campaign adviser urging the outreach to faith communities. “It’s something that for a national Democratic campaign was rather new, and certainly a lot of good lessons (were) learned that we can build on.”

Vanderslice, an evangelical Christian, joined the Kerry campaign in April. It was the first time a Democratic presidential campaign had a national staff person specifically charged with mobilizing people of faith at the grass-roots level.

Some Democratic activists weren’t sure what to make of Vanderslice’s efforts. Colleagues jokingly referred to her as the “church lady.” There was also some internal resistance to the outreach.

“It was a slow start,” Vanderslice said. “It was very new. It’s still new to many political operatives in the Democratic Party, and so there was some timidity around the language, around how to proceed.”

Meanwhile, Vanderslice was sharply attacked by some conservative activists. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights issued a statement calling her “a 29-year-old ultra-leftist who consorts with anti-Catholic bigots.” She calls the claims “outrageous.”


Said Vanderslice: “I think they, the religious right, would have attacked anyone who signed up for this responsibility and this position. They believe that this is their territory, and it just showed how threatened they would be if the Democrats really started to make this a priority.”

Despite the challenges, Vanderslice said the Democrats’ outreach program yielded some very positive results. “When I started, we didn’t have any lists to start with” but “by the end of the campaign we had close to 5,000 people (of faith) participating and volunteering for us.”

In addition, at the end of the campaign, there were full-time organizers in five of the key contested states.

“People out in the country said, `Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you.”

Vanderslice urged the party to continue expanding the efforts. She noted that the Republican Party and faith-based conservative groups have been doing outreach to religious communities _ evangelicals, black Protestants, Catholics _ for 20 years.

“It was a tremendous beginning, and I hope the Democrats will continue to understand the energy that’s out there in the faith community,” she said.


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But, she said, “it won’t be enough for Democrats just to wear the clothing of faith. There needs to be a long-term engagement with the religious community and an investment in building infrastructure, in building the grassroots, in reaching out to religious leaders and to religious people.”

“We have to make the investment _ on the staff level, in the state parties, in the infrastructure, to reach out to these communities and to build up a network” McCurry said Democrats have “to find the right way to connect to those … deeply felt values in the heartland of American that are really who we are as the American people.”

Neither Vanderslice nor McCurry suggested the Democrats need to abandon their stance on such hot-button issues as abortion and gay rights. Still, McCurry acknowledged the party needed “a little more understanding, a little more tolerance, a little more discussion on those issues to understand that there are real moral differences.

“Frankly, I think the Democrats are in a better position to have tolerant, reasoned discussion of those issues than the other party.”

Vanderslice rejected the idea suggested by some political pundits that Democrats have to moderate their positions “or run to the center.”

“This election says that is absolutely wrong,” she said. “I think what we need to do is to stand up in an even stronger and more principled way for the things that we believe.”


The religious community, she said, “can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic Party, and the more we bring that back in, I believe, the stronger our party will be, the better we’ll be able to represent our positive vision for the future.

“And I think it’ll help us start winning elections again.”

MO/DEA/LF END LAWTON

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