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Saturday, March 1, 2008
Will Huckabee win the evangelical vote?
Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s campaign stop in Waco this week focused the spotlight on how Central Texas evangelicals will figure in the selection of the Republican nominee.
Some assume that Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and an ordained Southern Baptist minister, will do well in the Waco area given the presence of Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university. However, the candidate himself dashed the notion that Baptists would automatically support him.
Below is his full response from a press conference after his rally at the Waco Hilton hotel on Thursday.
“I always said in Arkansas people had this assumption that because so many people in Arkansas are Baptist that they would assume they would vote for me. I always reminded them that if they asked how many of the Baptists are active in your campaign, I would say all of them. Half are for me and half are against me but they are all active.”
“Baptists are about the most independent people in the whole world. So anybody who thinks they march in lock step doesn’t know the denomination very well. Baptists love a good fight. If there isn’t one going, they will create it. Don’t ever expect Baptists to line up together. I think I probably have more universal support among Catholics than I do Baptists. It is just the nature of the beast. But I am willing to take every last Baptist vote there is, whether it is in Waco or any other part of Texas. I’d love to have it.”
Last week, Tribune-Herald reporter Cindy Culp asked Barry Hankins, a Baylor University history professor who researches the intersection of politics, religion and American culture, to ask her about how the evangelical vote will figure in the Republican primary election.
Hankins said he believes quite a few local evangelicals will vote for Huckabee even though U.S. Sen. John McCain seems poised to clinch the Republican nomination. They tend to vote their conscience no matter what, he said.
Some evangelicals are attracted to Huckabee because he is not tethered to the traditional Christian conservative platform and that his ideas go beyond issues such as abortion and prayer in school, he said.
The fact that Huckabee has some social justice components in his campaign makes him particularly attractive to young evangelicals, Hankins said.
“Evangelicals, I think, resonate with a politician who is a serious politician who is also comfortable talking about his faith,” Hankins said. “(Huckabee) is just authentic. He doesn’t have to stop and say, ‘Let’s talk about religion now.’ His whole life is infused with Christian commitment.”
And Tribune-Herald reporter Terri Jo Ryan got Rev. K. Randel Everett, recently named as executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, to weigh in on Huckabee.
“Mike and I are friends, when we were pastors together in Arkansas,” Everett said.
Everett was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Benton, Ark., from 1984-88, when Huckabee was pastor of Beech Street Baptist Church in Texarkana (1980-86) and then Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Ark. (1986-1992).
“I applaud the fact that he is running, and the incredible support he’s received from around the country,” he said.
“I’m proud of the campaign. He has a right to run as far as he wants to in this race.”
He credits Huckabee’s innate charm and like-ability for getting people involved in the election who haven’t been political party animals in the past.
“Mike grew up in a modest family,” Everett. “A lot of people in this country resonate with him,” and the kind of Abe Lincoln log cabin origins “that makes representative democracy attainable.”
