Targeting Biden on faith, Republicans move to salvage religious voters for Trump
Amid signs that white Catholic voters in the Rust Belt, Jewish voters in Florida and evangelical voters across key battleground states could be souring on President Donald Trump, conservatives plan to spend almost $135 million to shore up support among the critical faith-based voting blocs.
Democratic and Republican operatives increasingly view Trump’s ability to hold on to his evangelical base — and to dissuade other voters of faith from supporting his rival in the presidential race, Joe Biden — as key to the outcome of the November election.
A practicing Catholic, Biden has been chipping away at Republicans’ advantage with religious voters that propelled Trump into the White House four years ago.
The Democratic presidential nominee is actively appealing to faith-motivated voters with pledges to advance racial equality and prevent mass coronavirus deaths. And he has made morality a centerpiece of his bid to defeat Trump.
Trump – who rarely goes to church between major religious holidays — has accused Biden of being “against God,” and said Monday at the Republican National Convention there would be “no religion” in the Democrat’s administration.
“The idea that somehow putting a lapel sticker on that says devout Catholic makes you a devout Catholic won’t fool anybody,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the conservative anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List and a Trump campaign surrogate, said in an interview.
Religious right and anti-abortion groups that were vital to Trump’s election in 2016 are trying to steer religious voters away from Biden on the basis that he supports abortion. They are also telling voters that he and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, would prevent Christians from becoming judges.
Harris in 2018 asked a federal judicial nominee who belonged to the Knights of Columbus whether he was aware the fraternal Catholic group was against abortion when he joined. The inquiry prompted accusations from conservatives that Harris had engaged in religious discrimination.
“It’s going to be won or lost by a handful of voters, and our large swath of voters, we know are persuaded by these issues,” Dannenfelser said.
SBA List and its Super PAC Women Speak Out are targeting voters in swing states with digital ads, calls, mailers and door-to-door efforts. They have made more than 1.2 million visits to voters’ homes and 1.5 million calls, a spokesperson said.
Their goal is to contact 4.6 million people before the election and have budgeted $52 million in combined spending for those efforts in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and other battleground states.
The conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition is also conducting voter outreach in key states for the presidential and Senate races, where the group will have roughly 65 field offices, plans to knock on 3 million to 4 million doors and make 2 million live calls as part of a $50 million voter outreach campaign.
Ralph Reed, a founder of the group and a member of several Trump coalitions, said the effort is designed to turn out evangelicals, Catholics and pro-life voters. It is the largest voter persuasion and mobilization effort the group has ever undertaken.
“This is going to be triple to quadruple what we did four years ago,” Reed said.
Faith and Freedom’s literature will be shipped to churches after Labor Day, when Reed said he anticipates houses of worship will be open again in key areas.
The issue-based guides will lay out where each candidate stands on issues that motivate religious voters, including the use of federal funds for abortion and support for Israel, he said.
Reed told McClatchy the organization has more than 6,000 churches in Florida alone that will distribute its voter education guides.
The Family Research Council also says it has budgeted $20 million for the election cycle and is directing its resources at states that could decide the election where it has an existing infrastructure such as North Carolina. It plans to work with 1,000 churches in the state, FRC President Tony Perkins said.
A CATHOLIC CANDIDATE
The last Catholic to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960. Biden is the only vice president to identify as Catholic. He is one of just four practicing Catholics to win a major party’s nomination in U.S. history.
Exit polling from 2016 shows that 23 percent of all Americans identify as Catholic, and Catholic voters have an especially heavy footprint in the battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico and New Hampshire.
But Catholics do not vote in a bloc, Gallup has found, and being a practicing Catholic does not guarantee Biden will win the Catholic vote. In 2004, Republican George W. Bush, a Methodist, performed better with the religious group than Democrat John Kerry, the last Catholic presidential nominee before Biden.
“The Catholic vote to me is the most interesting, because that vote can swing, and that vote can make a big difference – particularly in places like Michigan,” said Jim Gerstein, a founding partner of Gerstein Agne Strategic Communications and an expert on religious voting patterns. “And it looks like Trump has been slipping significantly with the Catholic vote.”
A recent Pew poll found Biden leading Trump among Catholic voters by 52% to 47% — a reversal from Trump’s performance in 2016. Trump’s job approval among Catholics was 41%, down from 52% in April.
The Biden campaign believes it is making inroads both with Catholic and evangelical voters.
“We are doing intentional, robust engagement of many communities of faith, including the Evangelical community, who, according to public polling, are increasingly dissatisfied with President Trump’s response to COVID-19, response to protests against racial injustice, and overall job performance,” Josh Dickson, faith outreach director for the Biden campaign, told McClatchy.
Recent polls that have documented reduced support for Trump among white evangelicals were conducted after he stood holding a Bible outside St. John’s Church near Washington’s Lafayette Square shortly after protesters had been cleared out of the area with force and tear gas.
A Fox News poll showed that Trump is currently ahead of his Democratic opponent by 38 points among white evangelicals — a substantial lead, but far less than the 61-point lead he ultimately secured over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Other data suggests that, while his support among evangelicals has slipped, most continue to stand by the president. White evangelical Protestants are by and large supporting Trump at a similar rate as they did four years ago when he won 77% of their voters, according to a Pew survey. The June data found that 82% of white evangelical Protestants were planning to vote for Trump in November over Biden, who had 17% support.
‘THAT’S FOR THE EVANGELICALS’
At a campaign rally last week, Trump appeared to confirm what was long suspected, that his decision was motivated by politics to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and to recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.
“We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals,” said Trump, speaking from an airport hangar in Wisconsin. “The evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people. That’s really right, it’s incredible.”
The 2017 policy move has been a central talking point in Trump’s reelection strategy. The goal, according to his allies, is to energize evangelical voters and eat away at the Democratic margin of victory among Jewish voters in Florida, a state Trump must win to secure reelection.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has pursued a policy agenda well in line with the priorities of religious-minded voters, appointing conservative judges, supporting restrictions on abortion rights, defending religious freedom in court and partnering closely with Israel’s right-wing government.
The strategy may help Trump retain the support of megadonors such as Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the largest Republican donors in the 2016 election cycle, who have lauded his Israel policies and reportedly plan to fuel Trump’s candidacy with a major donation in the coming weeks.
The Republican Jewish Coalition also plans to spend more than $10 million to help Trump get reelected.
But it is unclear from polling if Trump’s explicit policy overtures are working with any of the religious groups he is targeting, whether it be Catholic, evangelical or Jewish voters.
“His policy agenda is firmly in line with the evangelicals,” said Gerstein. “He’s delivered on their agenda at the Supreme Court, on abortion, on big things that evangelicals are looking for in a president. If that’s not working for him with the vote, then it’s clearly a reflection on the character and integrity piece.”
“With Jews, it’s very different,” Gerstein said. “It’s very hard to move the Jewish vote in one way or another, because they’re such an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. Since 1972, the Democratic candidate has averaged 70% of the vote.”
Biden campaign officials told McClatchy that they have taken concerted steps to counter Trump’s strategy among all three religious groups.
“By emboldening anti-Semites and calling them ‘very fine people,’ President Trump has been clear — and Jewish voters are listening,” Aaron Keyak, Jewish outreach director for the Biden campaign, told McClatchy. “He and his supporters continue to go back to the same old GOP playbook on outreach to Jewish Americans, but it isn’t selling.”
‘HE’S AGAINST GOD’
Some of Trump’s sharpest attacks on Biden in recent weeks have revolved around religion. Earlier this month, the president said Biden had “hurt the Bible” and was “against God,” and last week accused the Democratic Party of excising religion from their convention.
The Biden campaign has dismissed Trump’s attacks. Dickson noted the former vice president has been “very public about his own Catholic faith and the way it informs his values and commitment to service, equity, justice, opportunity, and peace.”
The Democratic National Convention held a public Catholic mass the morning Biden delivered his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, and Dickson said that Biden would remain public about his faith throughout the campaign.
“We have hosted state-specific Catholic events, listening sessions with Catholic leaders, an event to commemorate Holy Week, and created video and written resources — including Joe’s Agenda for the Catholic Community — that underscore Vice President Biden’s Catholic faith and commitment to working with the Catholic community,” Dickson said.
Trump campaign senior advisor Mercedes Schlapp criticized the Biden-Harris ticket as the “most anti-Catholic presidential ticket that we’ve seen in our lifetime.”
“The president has been one of the strongest voices and one of the strongest advocates for the unborn and that is an important issue for evangelicals and Catholics across the board,” Schlapp said. “For Joe Biden, he can be going to church every single day, but when you look at his record, his record clearly shows he has not been supportive of what’s important to the evangelical and Catholic communities.”
If elected, Biden would fight state efforts to limit abortion rights, restore a contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act, renew funding for Planned Parenthood, and rescind a federal policy barring foreign aid to organizations that provide information on abortion services, according to his campaign website.
Biden reversed his position last year on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from funding most abortions through Medicaid, saying he no longer supported it.
Conservatives believe that policy shift will cut into support from white, working-class voters in crucial battleground states like Wisconsin, which has a sizable population of Catholics, Lutherans and Protestants.
“The one thing that Biden could cling to in the past as a Catholic that showed he wasn’t completely radical was his opposition to taxpayer funded abortion, but during this year’s primary process he flip flopped on that,” former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told McClatchy.
Trump does not profess to be deeply religious and has primarily left outreach to voters who are to his running mate, Vice President Mike Pence, who was raised Catholic but identifies now as evangelical.
But Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council and a member of Trump’s anti-abortion coalition, said most evangelicals remain loyal to Trump, because he advances policies that are important to them.
“You can talk about faith but if it doesn’t lead to any action, there’s no substance, there’s nothing there. I think people would rather the works of a president who promotes faith, rather than one who talks about it but does things that are actually counter to that faith,” Perkins said.
