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Dean woos faith voters
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Aug 02, 2007 02:47pm |
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| Category | Strategy |
| News Date | Thursday, August 2, 2007 08:45:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who once criticized the GOP as a “white Christian party” and also said “my religion doesn’t inform my public policy,” is building a sophisticated infrastructure to woo so-called values voters.
While attention has focused recently on public displays of religious faith by the leading Democratic contenders, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), Dean has quietly built a nationwide program.
His effort began early in 2005 when he met Leah Daughtry, an ordained Pentecostal minister who served as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chief of staff under former chairman Terry McAuliffe. They discussed the importance of faith voters, and Daughtry persuaded Dean to commission a poll of religious voters. The meeting impressed Dean enough to keep Daughtry in her job and to embark on an ambitious program to win faith-driven votes.
In 2006, the party set up pilot programs in six states to experiment with the best way to capture religiously motivated voters. The goal was not to alter policies to be more appealing. Instead, it was to emphasize that Democratic priorities, such as opposition to the war in Iraq, environmental conservation and expanded government subsidies for healthcare, were important to Democratic candidates because of their faith and values. |
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