Battle for evangelical voters heats up
Huckabee’s religious fervor has company
When former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee ran for president eight years ago, he scored a surprising upset in the opening Iowa GOP caucuses by appealing to the state’s evangelical voters.
This time, he’ll have a lot more company.
On Tuesday, Huckabee, 59, formally announced his bid for the Republican nomination in 2016 from his hometown of Hope, Ark. He portrayed himself as an economic populist, a protector of Social Security and a defender of Israel. A former Southern Baptist minister and Fox News talk-show host, he also touched on issues that particularly resonate with many conservative Christians, including his opposition to same-sex marriage, his support of religious freedom laws and his concern about the country’s moral standards.
“This country could only be explained by the providence of Almighty God,” he declared, noting he had accepted Jesus as his savior at Bible camp when he was 10. His campaign announcement at the University of Arkansas Community College opened with a prayer.
All of the major Republican
contenders oppose abortion and oppose recognizing a constitutional right for same sex marriage, so-called values issues that are particularly important to many Christian conservatives. What’s different this time are more concerted efforts by a half-dozen other contenders to target evangelical voters by talking openly about their faith and its importance in their lives and approach to governing.
One irony: The profusion of appeals underscores the continued influence of born-again Christians in the GOP — but it also could dilute their influence by dividing their votes among candidates.
At the Point of Grace Church in Waukee last month, nine prospective candidates addressed a forum sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“One thing Huck does have, he has a Rolodex of many thousands of Iowans who supported in the past,” Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa coalition, said in an interview. But Scheffler, who doesn’t plan to endorse a candidate himself, says Iowa voters, “even if they supported somebody in the past, they kind of wipe the slate clean.”
Huckabee acknowledged that he won’t match the fundraising prowess of his top rivals, but he starts with strong name recognition. In a CBS News/ New York
Times Poll released Tuesday, 47% of Republicans said they would consider voting for him. Only Florida Sen. Marco Rubio fared better, at 48%; former Florida governor Jeb Bush was at 46%.
Born-again voters are a powerful part of the Republican electorate, especially in two of the states that hold early contests. In Iowa, about six in 10 GOP caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians in 2008 and 2012. In South Carolina, 65% of Republican primary voters were evangelicals.
Their support helped Huckabee win the Iowa caucuses decisively in 2008 and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum win them narrowly in 2012. In both contests, their rivals made more limited efforts to reach out to evangelical voters.
This time, though, the first contender to formally announce his campaign, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, chose to do so in a speech at Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Va., which calls itself the largest Christian university in the world. He told them that his father had been saved “by the transformative love of Jesus Christ.”
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who announced her candidacy Monday, says she relied on her faith when her stepdaughter died of a drug overdose. “Without my complete conviction that a loving God had been with Lori ... I am not sure how I would have coped,” she wrote in Rising to the
Challenge, a memoir published Tuesday by Sentinel.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told the Iowa forum that the “single most important moment in my life is the moment that I found Jesus Christ.”
But it is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who may have the strongest connection in the Hawkeye State. In tiny Plainfield, Iowa, he is still remembered by some as the toddler son of the minister at First Baptist Church.
Born-again voters are a powerful part of the Republican electorate, especially in two of the states that hold early contests.