THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030415
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURIE GOODSTEIN, THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
The conservative Christian Coalition is mounting its most ambitious voter outreach ever in a midterm election, distributing 33 million voter guides for every Senate and gubernatorial race and 350 House races, and phoning 2 million homes to get out the vote on Election Day.
``For us it is an unprecedented opportunity to reverse a historical trend that sees religious conservative voters turn out in huge numbers in presidential elections, and then recede into insignificance in off-year elections,'' said Ralph Reed, executive director of the Chesapeake-based group. ``We have an opportunity to take a community that has been in self-imposed cultural isolation and move it into the mainstream of American political life.''
Most of the voter guides will be delivered to congregants at 60,000 churches Sunday, the last before Election Day. But for the first time, the coalition faces organized religious opposition in the form of the Interfaith Alliance, a clergy group formed last summer to counter the coalition's growing impact.
The alliance sent letters this week to 2,000 clergymen encouraging sermons and prayers Sunday denouncing those who ``use religion as a vehicle to promote an extreme political agenda.'' The letter has also been sent out over the Internet computer network.
``It is perfectly legitimate and commendable for people of faith to bring issues of faith into consideration on an election day,'' said the Rev. Larry Maze, the Episcopal Bishop of Arkansas, at a Little Rock news conference for the alliance Tuesday. ``However, for one group to lay claim to what is God's will in an election is presumptuous and misleading.''
Sunday mornings are prime time for politics, and not just on television talk shows. Among pastors, ``an increasing number of us do not see a gulf between the political and the spiritual,'' said Kirk B. Jones, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Boston, and a lecturer at the Andover Newton Theological School. ``We know the congregation's sway, and we're reinforcing the way the congregation is going anyway.''
The Christian Coalition's voter guides are a focus of controversy this year because the group has promoted them as a ``nonpartisan'' tool for voter education.
The coalition has compared its guides to those of the League of Women Voters, but league officials say they have complained to coalition leaders that the new guides are more a campaign advertisement than an unbiased comparison of candidates' views. And members of the alliance in Virginia on Wednesday attacked the guides as a conservative religious ``litmus test'' for candidates.
The guides are simple 8-by-5-inch sheets displaying opposing candidates' views on issues such as gun control, abortion, school vouchers and term limits. The guides do not endorse candidates or parties, and so do not put church tax exemptions at risk. In fact, Reed said, ``There are 40 to 50 pro-life Democrats who look very good on these voter guides.''
At the Christian Coalition's convention in Washington last month, Chuck Cunningham, director of voter education for the coalition, said that because the guides bypass the media and are more effective than direct mail, he anticipated attacks on them. Cunningham's speech was recorded by a member of the Interfaith Alliance who infiltrated the meeting.
``You can . . . get it out to hundreds and even thousands of people and you never paid postage. . . . That just drives them up a wall and you can be sure they're not going to let go without kicking (and) screaming,'' Cunningham said, referring to the coalition's opponents.
``It's in their best interest to attack the credibility of the voter guide and that's why you don't want to release it weeks before, even though it will be shipped weeks before the election. You want to hold it until that last Sunday because if they start raising doubts about the voter guide you're going to have a real skittish pastor that's just going to pull them,'' Cunningham said.
Reed said his group was not trying to escape scrutiny, and that some voter guides were mailed this week and have been made available to the media. He hit back at his clerical accusers, calling the Interfaith Alliance an ``insignificant political group on the radical left'' and a tool of the Democratic Party. ILLUSTRATION: Color AP photo
The Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition plans to ship millions of
copies of its voters guide, most to churches.
KEYWORDS: CHRISTIAN COALITION U. S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA by CNB