Christian Right Extends Roots in Iowa

The morning scream-fest over how to avoid being a “prisoner of love” was reaching a crescendo on the “Tempestt” syndicated talk show when a familiar, soothing face appeared in a commercial on WHO-TV here.

It was Pastor John Palmer of the First Assembly of God Church with a 30-second appeal to those “stressed out over life” to join him in prayer with Iowa’s largest congregation. The evangelical pastor turns up everywhere on local TV these days, 92 spots a week--on MTV, during NFL football playoffs, on the nightly news.

“We don’t advertise in the religion pages,” Palmer explained. “We want our message to get out to the broadest secular audience.”

Politically, it already has. Once almost exclusively the domain of farmland conservatives and country club moderates, the Iowa Republican Party--and, by extension, its influential presidential caucuses next month--now revolve around the state’s fastest-growing constituency: the Christian right.

They began as insurgents--a guerrilla band who surprised experts by turning out in droves in 1988 for Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson and propelling him to a shocking second-place finish in that year’s GOP caucuses, ahead of eventual nominee George Bush.

Now, as this year’s candidates gather in Des Moines today for a nationally televised debate, it is these Christian activists--estimated to be between 20% and 40% of the caucus vote--who are being wooed the most fervently by rival campaigns. And their pro-family causes have been so quickly embraced by nearly all the contenders that the only debate still flickering over social issues here is which candidate is the purest.

The result is that, unlike 1988, the religious conservatives are expected to split their support among several candidates.

Fewer Endorsements

The most glaring difference between the Robertson tide of 1988 and the Christian activist movement this year is the role of church pastors. More pastors made endorsements eight years ago, religious activists say. This year, only the most politically-connected pastors are still taking a role.

“It’s a whole new dynamic now,” said the Rev. John Hulsizer, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Dubuque and a Republican state committeeman. Christian activists, he said, are now “stirred on their own. They don’t have to go through the churches.”

The party’s old guard still matters: GOP political professionals cut deals as always in the clubby darkness of Skip’s restaurant, their Des Moines hangout, over cocktails and pork platters.

No sane presidential candidate would dare skirt the requisite stops at farm bureaus and breakfast spots in corn country. And the state’s party leadership has already been courted and plucked--from Gov. Terry E. Branstad, who backs Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the front-runner nationally and in Iowa, on down to local leaders such as Kevin Kimle, who supports Texas Sen. Phil Gramm as “fresher blood” for the party.

Also, a possible sign of weakness in the religious right’s sway over Iowa Republicans has emerged with a recent surge in poll ratings for publishing magnate Steve Forbes. As in other states, a barrage of Forbes ads has increased support for his candidacy, which stresses economic issues over social concerns. On Friday, the Dole camp responded with an ad that faults Forbes for “untested leadership” and “risky ideas.”

Still, as the Feb. 12 caucuses approach, much of the campaign’s heaviest lifting is being done in suburban homes, where religious activists sit for hours over their telephones, calling fellow parishioners and hoping to change a few minds for their candidates.

Such political spadework has always been essential to success in Iowa’s caucuses because attending them can require a major commitment of time. Even after voting for their presidential favorites, caucus-goers are expected to spend several hours more choosing local convention delegates and arguing over the state party’s platform.

“It’s the phone trees that will make or break this campaign,” said Gary Titus, a Gramm campaign worker in Ames. “We talk to our friends from church and they talk to their friends and it builds.”

For almost a year, the presidential campaigns have jockeyed to hire seasoned religious activists as political operatives. The Dole campaign struck early, locking up Steve Scheffler, a state GOP committeeman and Christian activist with deep contacts among social conservatives.

Since then, sudden defections have repeatedly roiled the fundamentalist establishment. In one recent month, two Christian activists supporting conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan departed, one to Dole and the other to Gramm. Then two fundamentalist county leaders working for Dole became concerned that he was not sufficiently committed to the anti-abortion cause and switched to the Gramm camp. Recently, Buchanan rebounded, announcing the backing of eight unaffiliated pastors.

The turmoil has left some sour feelings between once-friendly activists, but it is a necessary step in a maturing movement, said Ione Dilley, the head of Iowa’s Christian Coalition group and the state’s last prominent religious conservative to hold on to her neutrality. The fervent courting of activists, Dilley said, shows the respect her movement has won from hardened political professionals.

“We’ve got a little bit of the Christian Coalition in everyone’s campaign,” Dilley said.

Growing Ranks

The Christian activists have achieved their political status by building on their ’88 success. They now hold nearly half the seats on the state GOP’s central committee. And religious-right leaders take credit for increases in Republican registration in Iowa. At least 90,000 new Republicans have registered here since 1988, giving the GOP a 20,000-voter edge over Democrats.

Young suburban families are the largest demographic bulge among these new Republicans, said Drake University professor Hugh Winebrenner. In a state once known for its rural Republicans, more than 43% of GOP voters now live in the state’s 10 most densely populated counties, he said.

As virtually all of the GOP candidates promote carefully calibrated family-oriented campaign themes, the likely fragmentation of support among religious conservatives would aid front-runner Dole.

“It’s Dole’s to lose,” said Peverill Squire, chairman of the University of Iowa’s political science department. “He’s hired some of the most well-known Christian organizers in Iowa, and he’s worked hard to present himself as someone the religious right can at least be comfortable with.”

Rivals suggest that Dole’s support is soft. And they are aiming to keep his support on caucus night below 37%, the level he reached in winning the ’88 contest.

The hope of several campaigns is that they will win a lion’s share of the fundamentalist right vote--or at least enough to separate themselves from the rest of the pack and claim the mantle of Dole’s chief competitor. Indeed, the main question at the moment is whether any of the others has a chance at a clear second-place finish.

Those furthest away from that goal appear to be Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander. Lugar’s last-ditch attempt to stir excitement--an ad campaign warning of nuclear terrorism--fell flat when it aired in Iowa last month.

Alexander won some early converts, among them Iowa House Speaker Ron Corbett, with his low-key campaign style. But his anti-Washington message seems to have gone stale in a state that elected a new slate of hard-core conservative congressmen in 1994.

Forbes clearly has benefited from a heavy rotation of campaign ads touting his flat-rate tax proposal and pricking at Dole’s “Washington vision.” His most recent ads, which blistered Dole for voting for federal funding of a rustic ski lodge and an oceanfront bike trail, finally drew blood, prompting Dole to respond after his campaign’s own polls showed Forbes gaining ground.

“Now it’s our turn,” said Darrell Kearney, Dole’s Iowa campaign manager.

Chasing Dole

Kearney and aides to other candidates remain skeptical of Forbes’ chances in Iowa, largely because his campaign has displayed no sign of the grass-roots support long-considered necessary to persuade voters to show up for the lengthy caucuses. As late as last week, Forbes’ paid staff was still calling Iowa county party leaders, pleading for the names of locals who might work as volunteers.

“You’re not going to drive [voters] with just media,” said Loras Schulte, director of Buchanan’s Iowa campaign.

Buchanan, for his part, has yet to show signs of deepening his support, despite impeccable credentials among religious activists. In recent weeks, he has repeatedly visited factories and farms, calling for economic barriers and inveighing against the wastes and odor produced by giant hog operations. Buchanan appears to be trying to stir support among conservative Democrats who are not normally a factor in either party’s caucuses--but who could vote at the GOP gatherings as long as they register as Republicans that night.

Gramm, who surprisingly tied Dole in a state party straw poll last August (in part by flying in supporters from outside Iowa), has built a streamlined campaign organization that has targeted Christian activists. But the Texas senator has had difficulty separating himself from the other candidates.

Part of Gramm’s problem, said the Christian Coalition’s Dilley, is that after initially focusing on fiscal conservatism, he developed a strong pro-family message only recently. “Early on, he couldn’t quite bring himself to talk about social issues,” she said. Now that he is, Dilley said, some activists “aren’t listening.”

Former State Department official Alan Keyes may be the surprise of the race; at the least, he is the only candidate setting hearts fluttering among Christian conservatives the way Robertson did in 1988. Pounding away against abortion, Keyes has the potential to be this year’s low-flying candidate, undetected on other campaigns’ radar screens.

Rival operatives sneer at his lack of organization. But knowledgeable Christian activists see the possibility of a movement that might build unnoticed, as it did for Robertson.

“Whenever I do a political show, the Keyes people come out of the woodwork,” said Jan Mickelson, a WHO morning talk-radio host who is Iowa’s version of Rush Limbaugh. “The Keyes folks would crawl over glass for him.”