THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602120192
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DES MOINES LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
Around the nation, Executive Director Ralph Reed Jr. is the face and the voice of the Christian Coalition. In Iowa, he is largely eclipsed by the woman that the statewide newspaper called ``Grandma Ione.''
``Ione Dilley is the Christian Coalition in Iowa. People identify with Ralph too, but they know Ione,'' said Marlys Popma, deputy campaign manager for Sen. Phil Gramm and Dilley's longtime ally. ``She has almost achieved sainthood in Iowa among conservatives.''
Reed and Dilley share an agenda, political savvy and plenty of phone conversations, but that's where the similarity stops. Reed, 34, exudes smooth-talking, boyish charm. Dilley, the 70-year-old leader of the Iowa Christian Coalition, uses words slowly, weighted by wariness and the wisdom of a long life.
While he taps out political manifestos on a laptop, she assembles photocopied packets to send to potential members. He flits between offices in Chesapeake and Washington, with a staff of more than 50. She works in her basement, with hand-sewn quilts stacked in one corner and a fax machine in the other.
If Reed is playing inside-the-Beltway power politics, Dilley is out in the sticks pulling the strings that give him clout.
Dilley's one luxury is a phone headset to spare her shoulder during hours of talking. In busy political seasons, she spends eight to 10 hours a day on the phone, planning meetings, conducting surveys and always, always, pulling in new members.
Lately, she's fielded several calls from broadcaster and coalition founder Pat Robertson, who wants updates on Iowa straight from the grass roots.
``My ear gets weary,'' she said.
Recently she bought an answering machine, a reluctant response to doctor's orders. She had a heart attack in November and is allowed to work only four hours a day. It's not an easy rule to follow just before the caucuses, when she's trying to organize the distribution of 100,000 coalition voter guides in the state's churches.
She's doing it without the help of Steve Scheffler, the coalition's longtime field director who left a year ago to work on Dole's campaign. In the old days, he would hit the road, traveling to meetings in rural towns across the state, while she worked the phones.
``We complement each other,'' the 47-year-old Scheffler said. ``Ione is the type of person who moves methodically, thinks things out, weighs pros and cons. I am more the person who says, `Do this now!' and Ione slows things down.''
Dilley's climb to political prominence was slow and steady. She grew up on a family farm and trained as a nurse. She met her husband, Kenneth, on a blind date.
They live a few miles outside Des Moines, on farmland fast vanishing to suburbs, with a paint-chipped barn and Arabian horses out back, and a framed copy of the Constitution in the dining room.
The couple had four children, but have lost two to cancer - a son at 19 and their only daughter at 33. . Those tragedies, in part, explain the fervor she brings to her faith and her anti-abortion causes. ``They were saved children,'' she said. ``I believe in eternity. I know that I will see them someday.''
One of her dearest wishes is to see Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for the legalization of abortion, overturned. She wants more opportunities for children to say personal prayers in school and read their Bibles during free time in class.
That passion is tempered with a strong dose of practicality.
But she won't complain about being called practical, either.
Practical means posting a bumper sticker ``It's a Child, Not a Choice'' on her Cadillac - and then keeping a stack of 20 on the back seat to give to anyone who asks about it, like a waitress at the McDonald's drive-thru window.
Practical means she'll start conversations and pick up members in supermarket aisles. On airplanes. In the church lobby. When people move in to the fast-growing suburbs of West Des Moines, she drops by to welcome them. ``My question is, `Are you active in politics?' And I begin to find out where their leanings are,'' she said.
And when folks tell her they don't care about politics, or that politics is a dirty business, Dilley isn't deterred: ``Everyone is interested in politics, whether or not they think so.''
Dilley got into politics through the church door. She attended First Federated Church, a rapidly growing non-denominational Christian church in Des Moines that decided in the early 1970s to start a religious elementary school.
When the school - which now has about 900 students in kindergarten through high school - grew large enough to need transportation for students, Dilley decided to go to the state Capitol to ask for some funding.
She didn't have a clue how to make it happen. ``I didn't know how a bill became law, who to talk to, how to lobby. I just did it,'' she said. ``John Q. Citizen, you can do it! You can.''
In two years, a group that included Dilley and the Catholic diocese got the state to help pay for some transportation of private school students and Dilley became a paid lobbyist for the Iowa Association of Christian Schools.
She joined Robertson's issue-oriented Freedom Council through a state chapter organized at her church. By the time Robertson's presidential campaign got rolling around 1987, she was committed enough to be a key staff member in Iowa. Though she still hadn't met him in person, she regularly tuned in to his weekday news and spiritual show, ``The 700 Club.''
Robertson finished a stunning second to Dole in the 1988 Iowa caucuses, but couldn't sustain that success.
Back in Iowa, Dilley and other grassroots believers didn't want to close up shop, so they formed ``The Advance Group,'' which met monthly to talk about politics and history.
They were ready for action in 1989 when Robertson formed a new grassroots political group, the Christian Coalition.
She and Scheffler called friends around the state, asking them to gather some folks around coffee and doughnuts for a political training meeting. In the early days, they'd drive miles and miles, sometimes to an empty house.
``They'd invite 50 people and there would be two,'' she remembers. ``Each time, Steve and I would tell each other - the Lord had the people there He wanted there. Those people will be worker bees.''
Dilley wants to propel into political awareness people who share her values, and make them feel connected to, and responsible for, their local and national leaders.
``There's a deep well to be drawn from of people who are concerned about family values, who up to now said, `What good would it be for me to get involved? What good would it be for me to go to a caucus?,' '' she said. ``They're everywhere!''
And when Dilley meets them, her goal is simple: ``Light a little fire inside them.'' ILLUSTRATION: VICKI CRONIS COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian Pilot
Christian Coalition members Donna Leporte, right, office manager for
candidate Pat Buchanan in Des Moines, and Tanya Barnhart, part of a
national campaign team dispatched from Maryland to help out, work
the phones.
``Ione Dilley is the Christian Coalition in Iowa,'' says a longtime
ally of Dilley. ``She has almost achieved sainthood in Iowa among
conservatives.''
Ione Dilley, leader of the Iowa Christian Coalition, prays at church
with her husband, Kenneth. Dilley's goal is to increase political
awareness in people who share her values and make them feel
responsible for their elected leaders.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY IOWA CAUCUS
CHRISTIAN COALITION by CNB