Regis Philbin
Dec 26th, 2006, 06:06 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/us/politics/26faith.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
Consultant Helps Democrats Embrace Faith, and Some in Party Are Not Pleased
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Mara Vanderslice, who works with Democrats on reaching out to evangelical voters, in a Colorado chapel.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 26, 2006
As Democrats turn toward the 2008 presidential race, a novice evangelical political operative is emerging as a rising star in the party, drawing both applause and alarm for her courtship of theological conservatives in the midterm elections.
Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Exit polls show that Ms. Vanderslice’s candidates did 10 percentage points or so better than Democrats nationally among those voters, who make up about a third of the electorate. As a group, Democrats did little better among those voters than Senator John Kerry’s campaign did in 2004.
“Everybody is looking at the specific steps that had value in those states, and the compass points to her and the efforts she helped lead out there,” said Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and was recently hired to play a similar role for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president.
Mr. Strider said he was speaking only in the context of his current House role and declined to comment on the work with Mrs. Clinton.
Consultant Helps Democrats Embrace Faith, and Some in Party Are Not Pleased
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Mara Vanderslice, who works with Democrats on reaching out to evangelical voters, in a Colorado chapel.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 26, 2006
As Democrats turn toward the 2008 presidential race, a novice evangelical political operative is emerging as a rising star in the party, drawing both applause and alarm for her courtship of theological conservatives in the midterm elections.
Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Exit polls show that Ms. Vanderslice’s candidates did 10 percentage points or so better than Democrats nationally among those voters, who make up about a third of the electorate. As a group, Democrats did little better among those voters than Senator John Kerry’s campaign did in 2004.
“Everybody is looking at the specific steps that had value in those states, and the compass points to her and the efforts she helped lead out there,” said Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and was recently hired to play a similar role for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president.
Mr. Strider said he was speaking only in the context of his current House role and declined to comment on the work with Mrs. Clinton.