Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 21, 1993 TAG: 9306210042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK O'KEEFE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long
He is not what you'd expect: not a born-again Christian, not a fundamentalist, nor an evangelical. He's not even a Republican.
He is a registered Democrat. A civil-rights leader. And he's black.
Roy Innis, head of the national civil-rights group Congress of Racial Equality, is running for mayor of New York, a bastion of liberalism seemingly inhospitable to appeals from Pat Robertson's Chesapeake-based political machine.
Innis strides to the lectern and jokes about his obvious differences with a crowd that has only two black faces. He says he doesn't know whether he should be called a black or an African-American.
"I feel sorry for you white folks sometimes," Innis said. "We get to change our name every 10 years."
The 3-year-old Christian Coalition is not changing its name. But the appearance of Innis at a Christian Coalition political-training seminar ending today shows how the organization is trying to change its image and its strategy.
The fast-growing 400,000-member organization is trying to expand beyond its largely white, largely evangelical, largely Southern and overwhelmingly Republican constituency.
Its backing of Innis in New York is but one example of the coalition's efforts to enlist groups all but ignored in past years by Christian conservatives in their cultural war for the heart and soul of America:
In April, the coalition forged an alliance with the Catholic Archdiocese of New York in the citywide School Board elections. The Innis diocese, led by Cardinal John O'Connor, distributed 100,000 Christian Coalition voter guides in its 214 churches. Americans United for Separation of Church and State called the uniting of Robertson and O'Connor an "unholy matrimony."
The coalition printed 100,000 election guides in Korean for the Los Angeles mayoral primary, also in April. They were distributed in 700 Korean churches.
In January, the coalition hired a Jewish conservative, Marshall Wittman, to be its lobbyist in Washington.
As strange as it may seem, Innis needs the coalition and the coalition needs Innis. Innis, who wore a National Rifle Association lapel pin in his appearance in Norfolk, is considered a long shot in the liberal politics of the New York Democratic Party. He is also at odds with New York Mayor David Dinkins, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other black political leaders who consider him a Democrat in name only.
Barbara Handman, New York director of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, describes Innis as "totally rigid" and "off the wall."
"You want to ask him, `How can you, as a black man, say these things apart from the community you're supposedly representing?' "
Innis is more appealing to the coalition than Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani, who supports gay rights. Innis needs the coalition's political machinery and its money if he is to have any chance.
By backing the 41-year-old civil-rights leader who was prominent in the black struggle for justice in the '60s, the coalition opens a door to the minority community - even if Innis is defeated.
Opponents say the new relationships are merely symbolic, that the religious right will always be a political movement for white, church-going Southerners.
The relationships with minorities are not as strange as they might first appear.
Many Catholics share the religious right's opposition to abortion. Some surveys, particularly among black Protestants, find surprisingly conservative views on some social issues, including homosexuality.
Like the coalition, Innis supports abstinence-based sex education and government vouchers to support private education.
Friday night in Norfolk, Innis thanked the coalition for its resources, saying it was like "having the cavalry ride in to the rescue."
Innis encouraged the coalition to go after morally conservative black voters.
"We have to come together," said Innis, "to show blacks and whites in America that truthful, helpful and courageous candidates can win in the black community."
Innis invited coalition members to call CORE headquarters to help them find sympathetic minority ministers across the country.
He also advised the coalition to:
Demand from the media a balancing quote from a black conservative whenever Jackson or another liberal African-American is presented as a spokesman for the entire black community.
Support "honest black groups" like CORE.
Help black political candidates, like himself, by providing personnel, fund-raising expertise and public-relations skills.
Ralph Reed Jr., executive director of the Christian Coalition, said the organization does not fool itself into thinking it will get 55 percent of the black vote overnight.
"But we don't need 55 percent. If we get 20 percent, we change America."
Results in the New York city School Board elections, a gold mine of publicity for the coalition, have encouraged the organization to pursue the strategy.
Key issues were a "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum that taught acceptance of homosexuality and a debate about the availability of condoms in the public schools.
Many Catholics saw in the two issues a threat to traditional values, and the Catholic archdiocese, one of the most powerful institutions in all of New York, became their spokesman.
That concern put the Roman Catholic Church on common ground with the Christian Coalition's campaign against moral decay.
by CNB