| ELECTION 2002: Local races shaped by bread and
butter issues
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
Two scenes from Campaign 2002:
Fifteen-year-old Nick Reichel is singled out by President Bush at
an Oct. 18 rally for Minnesota Republican senatorial candidate Norm Coleman.
Bush praises the young man’s 400 hours of volunteer service, calling him a
soldier in the “armies of compassion.” Reichel’s mother, Kim,
looks on proudly, sporting a “Catholics for Coleman” sticker.
Three days later, Missouri Republican senatorial candidate Jim
Talent is asked his view of stem cell research. Invoking Catholic-friendly
language, the 46-year-old Presbyterian says he supports limits on the research
because it is a matter of “the dignity and value of individual human
life.” He uses the question to reiterate his opposition to
“partial-birth abortion,” a view not shared by his opponent,
Democratic incumbent Jean Carnahan.
War and terrorism combined with bread and butter issues -- jobs,
health care, Social Security and the environment -- dominate debates and media
buys in the nation’s most competitive senate and gubernatorial elections.
But there’s an undercurrent in the close races -- an appeal to religious
voters motivated by faith-driven concerns -- that could ultimately shape
control of Congress, and return several large states to Democratic control for
the first time since the 1980s.
The variables in this off-year election -- a sagging economy and a
popular president, the threat of war, the traditional loss of seats by an
incumbent party in a non-presidential year, the razor-thin margins that account
for Democratic control of the Senate and Republican control of the House -- are
too great for any analyst to single out one group and call them key to control
of the Senate or key state houses.
Still, said Loyola Marymount Political Science professor Matthew
Streb, “religion is so important in these races.”
And the nation’s 60 million Catholics account for the largest
up-for-grabs voting bloc.
“In recent decades … Catholics have become less reliably
Democratic in both their party identification and their vote choice,”
according to a December 2000 report of the Center for Applied Research in the
Apostolate. “Contrary to what many analysts have predicted, however, they
have yet to realign with the Republican Party. Instead, Catholics have
maintained a moderately high level of allegiance to the Democratic Party and
have repeatedly defied conventional partisan and ideological categories and
expectations. The tendency of Catholics to be both divided and distinctive in
their political preferences and their willingness to cross traditional partisan
and ideological lines continues to confound political analysts and makes the
‘Catholic vote’ an elusive prize.”
It’s relatively simple, says Streb: “On cultural issues
Catholics tend to agree more with Republicans, while on economic issues they
lean toward the Democrats.”
The Catholic vote is, in fact, many different votes. In California
and Texas, for example, largely Democratic Latinos make up the fastest growing
segment of this constituency. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio it
is urban ethnics -- and their less Democratically inclined white suburban
Catholic counterparts -- who can swing a race.
At the presidential level, Catholics typically favor the winner --
the first George Bush in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Al Gore won a
slim majority of the Catholic vote in 2000.
At the congressional level, Catholics made the crucial difference
in the 1994 election, when for the only time before or since they supported
Republican candidates over Democrats (by a margin of 53-47), leading to
Republican control of the House of Representatives for the first time in a
generation. A recently released Gallup poll shows that 62 percent of Catholics
are inclined to vote Democratic in this year’s congressional races, while
38 percent favor Republicans.
The Minnesota and Missouri senatorial races -- Democratic control
of the Senate could hinge on either of these hotly contested races --
demonstrate just how significant the Catholic vote could be this year.
In Minnesota, says Politics in Minnesota newsletter editor
and Republican activist Sarah Janecek, the “Catholic vote” is code
for “paper the churches with pro-life stuff.” That should be good
news to Republican senatorial candidate Norm Coleman, a one-time Democrat who
switched parties largely as a result of growing discomfort with the
pro-abortion rights stance of the Democrat Farm Labor party.
An October Zogby poll shows the Democrat, incumbent Paul
Wellstone, leading Coleman, but falling behind in the Catholic constituency. In
his 1996 run for the Senate, Wellstone -- the Senate’s most left-leaning
member -- garnered 56 percent of the state’s Catholics; today, he’s
getting just 44 percent of the Catholic vote.
Likewise, in Missouri, recent polls show incumbent Carnahan losing
ground to Republican Talent among all groups, not least among the state’s
Catholics. Carnahan is getting just 42.9 percent of the Catholic vote to
Talent’s 47.8 percent, according to a mid-October Zogby poll.
“Assuming the poll numbers are correct,” said St. Louis
University’s Kenneth Warren, “the Catholic voters seem to have
abandoned Jean Carnahan and have gone over to Jim Talent.” He pointed out
that Al Gore lost the state to George Bush in 2000, but still carried a
majority of the Catholic vote.
Meanwhile, the gubernatorial campaigns in Pennsylvania, Michigan
and Illinois -- each of which will likely be won by Democrats -- present a
prettier picture for Democrats, according to University of Akron political
scientist John Green, author of The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant
Clergy. “These states have been governed by Republicans for some time
now, but there is some interest in more active government on social welfare
issues, particularly education, and Catholics may be in the forefront of
that.”
If that trend holds up -- if Democrats in large industrial states
win with the overwhelming support of white Catholics -- that is good news for
the Democratic Party nationally, said Green. Just as George W. Bush hopped from
Austin, Texas, to Washington and Bill Clinton transitioned from Little Rock,
Ark., to Pennsylvania Avenue, a state house is often the best route to the
White House.
Joe Feuerherd is NCR Washington correspondent. His
e-mail address is jfeuerherd@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 01,
2002
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