Obama Campaign Is Making Progress With Evangelical Voters [View All]

[Hope And Change]

Obama Campaign Is Making Progress With Evangelical Voters

McCain leads with the group but the Democrat is doing all the right things

By Liz Halloran

Posted July 17, 2008

Randy Brinson says he "almost fell out of my chair" when he heard that expected Democratic nominee Barack Obama had chosen Zanesville, Ohio, as the setting for a recent speech in which he embraced the concept of using faith-based groups to help carry out government social service efforts.

It wasn't that Zanesville struck Brinson as an odd locale. Quite the opposite. It was that Obama had clearly figured out something that Brinson already knew.

"Zanesville is Ground Zero for conservative evangelicals in Ohio," says Brinson, who, as founder of the voter registration organization "Redeem the Vote," knows a thing or two about where to find conservative Christians. It's a place, he says, that is populated with just the kind of recently reliable Republican voters Obama has tried to woo with a strategy that Brinson and other Christian leaders say they have found remarkable.

"They've researched where the votes are, and they've thrown away the old Democratic playbooks," says Brinson, who is among the evangelical leaders the Obama camp has reached out to. "Instead of just relying on a large number of urban votes, they're going to suburban areas and reaching out to a large number of conservatives." And so are Obama supporters: the religious political action committee Matthew 25 has already aired a pro-Obama ad on Christian radio in Colorado Springs, Colo., home of evangelical leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a harsh critic of the Democratic candidate.

Zanesville is one of the places where Brinson's five-year-old nonprofit group found particularly fertile ground for signing up "people of faith," he says. His group registered more than 78,000 people nationwide in 2004 and was instrumental in boosting the ranks of conservative white Christian voters who helped President Bush win his second term. Redeem the Vote now touts its 70 million-plus E-mail list that targets evangelicals. Mike Huckabee used the list to help him win eight primary and caucus contests before ceding the race to presumed GOP nominee John McCain.

"Where the Obama campaign is going is right on target, and that's why he's doing so well," Brinson said.


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http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/07/17/obama-campaign-is-making-progress-with-evangelical-voters.html