« Ken Blackwell
June 26, 2008
Nose Holding in Ohio
John McCain’s messy break-up with televangelist Rod Parsley had the potential to hurt him most in Ohio, a swing state necessary for McCain and the place where Parsley built a network of electorally-charged “Patriot Pastors” in 2004 and 2006. Now McCain is making amends by delving deeper into the state’s Religious Right.
Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who helped Bush win there in 2004, is a close ally of Parsley; the two campaigned heavily together during Blackwell’s losing bid for governor in 2006. In an AP story today, Blackwell was critical of McCain’s ham-handed efforts to enlist the Religious Right:
"He has never identified with the evangelical and Christian movement and therefore he can, at times, misread or misinterpret certain activities in the political field of play or certain comments that are offered," said Blackwell, now at the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank. "I personally would like for John to get to the point of comfort with some of our issues and policy positions, through understanding and genuine acceptance."
Despite these warnings, Blackwell is a Republican politician at heart and is supporting McCain (who endorsed Blackwell in 2006)—he even recorded a robo-call for the Arizona senator before the Ohio GOP primary in February. But other activists are even more cagey about how much they’ll work for McCain.
In the same AP article, Chris Long of the Ohio Christian Alliance (which broke away from the Christian Coalition when it got too soft) warned, “There’s certainly a little reservation about Mr. McCain.”
Phil Burress, a leader of Ohio’s Religious Right, has been skeptical of McCain’s judges promises and emphasized in March that McCain had a lot more sucking up to do:
Burress, who heads Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says although he would vote for McCain in the general election, the Arizona lawmaker has thus far failed to energize the bloc Burress refers to as "values voters."
"They are not mobilized right now -- and in fact, they're just going to be sitting back waiting to hear what he has to say to try to get these people to engage in his campaign," explains Burress.
Burress contends McCain needs to apologize to evangelical Christians and values voters for the way he has treated them over the years. He says because the senator is not likely to make that apology, he must strengthen his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.
Jack Willke, the former National Right to Life leader who has been called the “grandfather” of the anti-abortion movement, also made “clear” to McCain the unhappiness of the Right, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
Nevertheless, Willke, like the others, is supporting McCain. But McCain is still worried enough to set up a meeting today with Burress, Wilke, Long, and others, as Jake Tapper reports.
Lori Viars, executive director of the Family First PAC … told the Dayton Daily News that her fellow conservatives "would probably hold our nose and vote for McCain."
Apparently before said mass nose-holding can transpire, this meeting was required.
Posted by Ezra at 5:19 PM | Permalink
March 19, 2008
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Pretend to Join 'Em
With the passing of right-wing luminaries such as Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy in recent months, coupled with the aging of many of the Right’s traditional leaders, the movement itself appears to be in flux and some are getting worried about just what will become of it in the future. Just last week, James Dobson voiced these concerns while addressing the National Religious Broadcasters Convention:
“It causes me to wonder who will be left to carry the banner when this generation of leaders is gone. The question is, will the younger generation heed the call? Who will defend the unborn child in the years to come? Who will plead for the Terri Schiavos of the world? Who’s going to fight for the institution of marriage, which is on the ropes today.”
The emerging conventional wisdom is that the Religious Right is on the verge of being replaced by a “new evangelical” movement that shares the old-guard’s opposition to gays and abortion, but also cares about issues like poverty and the environment. The standard-bearer of this “new breed” is Mike Huckabee who, as he puts it, drinks “a different kind of Jesus juice” than the traditional leaders and routinely says things like this:
I don’t see [the right-wing movement] going into decline. I see it going into a maturing process. I think the issues are going to broaden and force Evangelicals to expand their horizons of concerns to poverty, disease, issues of education and homelessness. These are issues that I think are going to become increasingly important along with the environment as part of an overall focus that you’re going to see from - I would use a broader term - values voters - that would include not only Evangelicals but also Catholics and conservative Jewish voters as well.
Of course, just because a bunch of young upstarts think that caring about the environment is important doesn’t mean that the old-guard has any interest in broadening their agenda. As we noted last year, when the National Association of Evangelicals started to voice concerns about the environment and global warming, right-wing stalwarts like Dobson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer, Rick Scarborough, and Paul Weyrich dashed off an angry letter essentially demanding that the NAE fire its own Vice President over it.
The NAE didn’t back down, but the Right didn’t give up. Instead, they formed their own organization, the American Environmental Coalition, and now seek "to bring balance to the debate by being an alternative source of reliable information to Americans who seek the best way forward for our country.”
Because if you are looking for “reliable information” on environmental issues, you couldn’t ask for a better group of experts:
# Pat Robertson, The Christian Broadcasting Network
# Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation
# Gary Bauer, American Values
# Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law & Justice
# Rev. Lou Sheldon, Traditional Values Coalition
# Rev. Rob Schenck, Faith & Action
# Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
# Steve Elliott, Grassfire.org
# Amy Ridenour, National Center for Policy Analysis
It appears as if AEC was set-up back in September, with the site being registered to Gary Marx, who, along with being head of the Judicial Confirmation Network, also served on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
While the AEC has, to date, kept a pretty low profile, it appears as if the organization already has one key ally on the Hill - global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe:
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, today welcomed a letter signed by leading evangelical and conservative leaders opposing S.2191 - America's Climate Security Act (Lieberman-Warner). The letter, sent to all 100 U.S. Senators, urges the defeat of climate change legislation which they say would lead to “imperceptible” changes in temperature “while doing grave harm to our economy, the poor, and U.S. competitiveness.” The letter dispels the myth made by a few on Capitol Hill that people of faith have somehow embraced the more radical climate change proposals. Over 70 religious leaders, economists, scientists, state legislators and public policy advocates signed the letter.
“Leading evangelical and conservative leaders made a bold statement by joining together and sending a letter to all 100 Senators outright rejecting the economic wrecking Lieberman-Warner bill,” Senator Inhofe said. “I welcome this letter and encourage each of my colleagues to seriously consider the arguments made by these leading evangelical and conservative leaders. In particular, the letter states their concerns over the severe economic impact on American families as a result of millions of job losses, skyrocketing energy costs, as well as increased price of food, especially on the poor.
“Further, this letter clearly dispels the myth advocated by a few on Capitol Hill that leading evangelicals support Lieberman-Warner.”
Signatories to the letter include AEC founders Norquist, Weyrich, Sheldon, and Bauer as well as others like Richard Land, Tony Perkins, Ken Blackwell, Roy Innis, Jerome Corsi, and dozens more.
The Religious Right has made no secret of the fact that it opposes efforts to broaden its agenda because it fears that doing so will ultimately distract the movements from his anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda. But they have apparently concluded that they can’t win that argument and have decided to set-up their own anti-environmental front group instead.
After all, what need is there to be concerned about global warming when it is really just a sign of the Second Coming?
Posted by Kyle at 4:13 PM | Permalink
January 9, 2008
Just in Case, Right Wing Ready for Anti-Obama Campaign
Few constituencies were more surprised by Barack Obama’s win in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucus than the right-wing media—Clinton obsession has been its bread and butter for over a decade. Nevertheless, the Right is doing its best to prove it will pull no punches no matter who the Democrats nominate.
The Right has hardly refrained from attacking Obama—remember his visit to Rick Warren’s church over a year ago? Or last summer, when the National Clergy Council declared “Obama's Christianity [to be] woefully deficient”? But the last few days have seen a seeming uptick in the number of anti-Obama articles: For example, Human Events editor-at-large Terence Jeffrey warned that the Democrat is “the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.” A CNSNews piece surveyed African-American religious-right activists on the candidate, such as Rev. Clenard Childress of Blackgenocide.org, who implied that abortion is worse for blacks than was lynching, and Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, who said, “For Barack Obama to support abortion shows a lack of love for the black community and especially for the unborn."
But the Illinois senator’s faith seems to be the most appealing target of the Right. Newsmax correspondent Ronald Kessler offers a menacing warning that Obama attends a black church whose pastor propounds the “thesis that blacks in America are oppressed.” “At the least,” writes Kessler, “Obama’s membership in [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.”
(In particular, Kessler objects to the “Black Value System” on the church’s website. “One can only imagine the outrage that would erupt if a white presidential candidate like Romney subscribed to something called the White Value System,” he writes. One can only imagine what Kessler would think if he knew about the Religious Right’s “Black Contract with America on Moral Values.”)
But if Kessler wants to present Obama as a radical Christian, he’s going to have a lot of competition from those on the Right who want to present Obama as a radical Muslim, a (needless to say, inaccurate) smear that continues to be distributed as an e-mail forward. Daniel Pipes (nominated by Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace) wrote an article for David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine purportedly “confirming” the senator’s secret Muslim past.
Kessler concludes his report on Obama’s pastor with a bizarre comparison:
But media bias or not, if Obama is his party’s nominee, his Republican opponent will rightly be able to make use of Rev. Wright and his radical teachings as effectively as supporters of George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton’s furlough to help Bush win the presidency.
The 20-year-old Horton ad would hardly be the first campaign strategy to come to mind, unless Kessler were recalling the ad’s widespread reputation as a crypto-racist attack on Michael Dukakis. In that sense, comparing it to these insinuations about the black church may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Posted by Ezra at 6:06 PM | Permalink
November 16, 2007
The Triumphant Return of Tom DeLay
The media is reporting that Tom DeLay is set to unveil his own right-wing version of MoveOn.org as he seeks to salvage his own reputation and the Republican Party’s electoral chances heading into 2008:
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has formed a new grass-roots organization that he says will help conservatives better convey their message to voters and take back control of Congress.
The Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) — co-founded by Mr. DeLay, Texas Republican, and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — will establish "chapters" in all 50 states, which will be used to lobby lawmakers, coordinate political messages and influence members of the press.
"Right now, liberals are better organized, funded and active than I have ever witnessed," Mr. DeLay said. "Our goal is to work with the talented leaders of the conservative movement to complement their efforts, using an army of activists to push for the policies and leadership conservatives are begging for."
Roll Call reports that while CCM is DeLay’s baby, Ken Blackwell is going to be doing most of the heavy lifting:
CCM, a DeLay brainchild, actually will be headed by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who lost his 2006 gubernatorial bid to then-Rep. Ted Strickland (D). But DeLay is helping to establish CCM as a viable group and is in the midst of raising money for the venture and building its infrastructure.
…
CCM plans to establish several local chapters in major media markets throughout the country (a meeting of the Houston chapter, in DeLay's political backyard, is scheduled for Nov. 27). CCM particularly is targeting those media markets where left-of-center advocacy groups and 527s are operating.
Through these chapters and Blackwell's personal outreach, CCM plans to "identify, recruit, train, inspire, activate and mobilize conservative activists to take specific action on policy issues and political causes" nationwide, according to an advance copy of the group's brochure obtained by Roll Call.
Moving forward, DeLay will remain active in CCM, in particular as honorary finance chairman. DeLay has spent the past year building the foundation of the organization and preparing it for launch. Blackwell is serving as CCM's chairman.
Blackwell is a logical choice to partner with DeLay in this effort to unify the Republican Party’s economic and social conservative base since, following the failure of his own 2006 gubernatorial bid, Blackwell was embraced by both strands of the GOP’s base, securing not only a position as Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment with the socially conservative Family Research Council, but positions with the economically conservative National Taxpayers Union and Club for Growth as well.
On top of that, Blackwell shares DeLay’s gift for inflammatory, partisan rhetoric:
CCM believes it will be uniquely suited to bring together “security, economic, and cultural conservatives” by uniting them behind a common agenda committed to protecting American families from their myriad of “enemies”:
Conservatives believe that security without prosperity is fleeting and that prosperity without security is impossible. We believe the family - rather than the group or the consumer - is the basic unit of society and civilization and that government as such has a special responsibility to protect our families, and in particular our children from all enemies: foreign, domestic, or judicial.
It is good to see that DeLay has not lost his taste for demonizing and threatening the judiciary since leaving office.
Posted by Kyle at 5:11 PM | Permalink
September 20, 2007
Religious Right Rally against Marriage Equality in Florida
Just days after the Religious Right’s B-team gathered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to question Republican candidates for president (including the ones who didn’t show up), a number of more prominent right-wing figures are convening in Tampa for the Family Impact Summit, sponsored by the Focus on the Family-affiliated Florida Family Policy Council, the Tampa-based Community Issues Council, the Family Research Council, and the Salem radio network.
Advertised topics range from “Christian Citizenship” to “Homosexual Agenda,” but the focus will no doubt be on the 2008 election, and in particular, the effort by Florida’s Right to put a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot—even though gays are already prohibited from marrying by statute.
Below is some background on the featured speakers, from Tony Perkins and Richard Land to Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, considered the leading religious-right think tank in Washington, DC. Before coming to FRC, Perkins was a state legislator in Louisiana, and as a campaign manager for a Republican candidate, he reportedly bought David Duke’s e-mail list.
Under Perkins’s leadership, FRC, along with Focus on the Family, put together several “simulcasts” of political rallies held in churches, including three “Justice Sunday” events in 2005-2006—“Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith,” ”God Save the United States and this Honorable Court,” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land”—featuring religious-right luminaries such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Phyllis Schlafly, along with politicians like Rick Santorum and then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, arguing that opposition to Bush’s extreme judicial nominees constituted an assault on their faith or Christianity itself. A fourth event just before the 2006 elections, “Liberty Sunday,” promoted the idea that gays and their “agenda” were out to destroy religious freedom.
That fall, FRC also organized a “Values Voter Summit,” in which Dobson and other activists exhorted their constituency to turn out for the GOP; the conference showcased a number of future presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Sam Brownback. A second Values Voter Summit is planned for next month.
Also appearing from FRC at the Family Impact Summit are David Prentice and Peter Sprigg.
Richard Land
Since 1998, Richard Land has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is “dedicated to addressing social and moral concerns and their implications on public policy issues from City Hall to Congress.”
Land has been an active and influential right-wing leader for many years and in 2005, was named one of “The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time Magazine, joining the likes of James Dobson, Chuck Colson, David Barton, Rick Santorum, and Ted Haggard.
Land also hosts three separate nationally syndicated radio programs and has written several books including, most recently “The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match!,” which Land claims seeks a middle ground between the right and the left on the role of religion in the public square. In reality, the middle ground Land stakes out consists mainly of standard right-wing positions on political and social issues that are made to appear moderate in comparison to ultra-radical positions put forth by far-right fringe elements.
In recent months, Land has been positioning himself to play a much more high-profile role in the presidential campaign than he has in the past, repeatedly asserting that he and other Evangelicals will not support Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich, should he run, while regularly bolstering the campaign of Fred Thompson, who Land calls a “Southern-fried Reagan.”
Harry Jackson
Jackson, pastor of a Maryland megachurch, has become a frequent spokesman for right-wing causes in recent years. In 2004, he played a prominent role in urging blacks to vote for George Bush, and in 2005, he started the High Impact Leadership Coalition and unveiled his “Black Contract with America on Moral Values”—an agenda topped with fighting gay marriage—at an event co-sponsored by the far-right Traditional Values Coalition. Jackson spoke at “Justice Sunday,” a religious-right rally in favor of Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as “Justice Sunday II, where he promised to “bring the rule and reign of the Cross to America.” He is a member of the Arlington Group.
Since then, Jackson has continued to urge blacks to vote for right-wing causes and candidates. “[Martin Luther] King would most likely be a social conservative,” he wrote in one typical column. His most recent efforts have focused on opposing hate crimes protections for gays, falsely claiming that a proposed bill would “muzzle our pulpits.”
In an article in Charisma magazine, Jackson wrote that the “wisdom behind” the “gay agenda” is “clearly satanic,” and he called for an aggressive “counterattack.” He asserted to The New York Times that “Historically when societies have gone off kilter, there has been rampant same-sex marriage.”
Don Wildmon
Wildmon is the Founder and Chairman of the American Family Association, which exists primarily to decry whatever it deems “immoral” in American culture and lead boycotts against companies that in any way support causes, organizations, or programs it deems offensive, particularly anything that does not portray gays and lesbians in a negative light.
Over the years, AFA has targeted everything from the National Endowment for the Arts, Howard Stern, and the television show “Ellen” to major corporations such as Ford , Burger King, and Clorox. AFA has also been particularly focused on Disney, declaring that the company’s “attack on America’s families has become so blatant, so intentional, so obvious” as to warrant a multi-year boycott.
Recently, AFA has been busy warning that proposed hate-crimes legislation is designed to lay the “groundwork for persecution of Christians,” attacked presidential candidate Mitt Romney over his time on the board of Marriott Corporation because the company offers adult movies in its hotels, and warned that the US Senate was “angering a just God” and bringing “judgment upon our country” by allowing a Hindu chaplain to deliver an opening prayer.
Gary Bauer
Gary Bauer is a long-time right-wing activist and leader. After serving President Ronald Reagan's administration for eight years in various capacities, Bauer went on to become President of the Family Research Council, which was founded, in part, by James Dobson of Focus on the Family, where Bauer also served as Senior Vice President.
Bauer stepped down from FRC in 1999 when he launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. After dropping out of the race, Bauer made a surprising endorsement of Sen. John McCain at a time when many of the other right-wing leaders had lined up behind George W. Bush.
Bauer’s standing took a beating when he defended McCain’s attack on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” and he was ostracized by many for quite a while after McCain lost. But Bauer pressed ahead, creating his own non-profit, American Values, and gradually reestablished himself in right-wing circles.
Since then, Bauer has been active in various right-wing campaigns, most notably joining with likes of Tony Perkins and James Dobson in defending and pressing for the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
William Owens
Owens, a graduate of Oral Roberts University and a Memphis pastor, founded the Coalition of African American Pastors to combat equal marriage rights for gay couples. Owens reportedly told the “Rally for Traditional Marriage” held in Mississippi in 2004 that “homosexual activists of today have hijacked the civil rights cause,” adding: “We're going to fight until we win,” he said. “We're going to have crusades and rallies like this until we win. We're going to let our political leaders know ‘if you don't stand for God, we won't stand for you.’” Owens lent the CAAP name to the Religious Right’s judges campaign, signing on to the “National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters” and holding a press conference in support of Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination.
In 2004, Owens formed an alliance with the Arlington Group, a coalition of powerful religious-right leaders that was widely credited with being the driving force behind the effort to put anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in 11 states in that year’s election. Owens is now on the group’s executive committee, alongside James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, Tony Perkins, Paul Weyrich, Rod Parsley and others.
Alan Chambers
"Ex-gay" Alan Chambers is president of Exodus International and executive director of Exodus North America, which claim gay men and lesbians can be “cured" and "change" their sexual orientation to heterosexual. Exodus' board includes long-time anti-gay activist Phil Burress of Ohio's Citizens for Community Values, his wife Vickie Burress – founder of the American Family Association of Indiana – and Mike Haley, who replaced discredited "ex-gay" John Paulk at Focus on the Family as chief spokesperson on homosexuality and gender issues. Exodus also co-sponsors a series of "ex-gay" conferences across the country with Focus on the Family. One recent Love Won Out event was particularly mired in controversy when it was revealed that one of its presenting organizations had published a racist column that appeared to justify slavery. During a 2006 CPAC conference panel, Chambers insisted "lifelong homosexual relationships are not possible" and the battle for marriage equality was solely being promoted by the liberal media.
Other representatives of the “ex-gay” activist community scheduled for the conference include Scott Davis and Mike Ensley of Exodus and Nancy Heche, whose book “The Truth Comes Out” describes “how to respond lovingly, yet appropriately, to homosexual family members and friends,” such as her husband, who held secret “homosexual affairs,” and her daughter, whose open relationship with Ellen DeGeneres Heche called “Like a betrayal of an unspoken vow: We will never have anything to do with homosexuals.”
Robert Knight
Robert Knight is something of a journeyman within the right-wing movement. After starting out as a journalist and editor for various newspapers, Knight has held a series of jobs with various right-wing organizations including Senior Director of Cultural Studies at the Family Research Council, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and director of the Culture & Family Institute at Concerned Women for America.
Currently, he is the head of the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center and a columnist for Townhall.com.
His hostility toward gays is well-known, as evidenced by his response to the news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the Vice President, was expecting a child with her partner:
"I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father," Knight said.
"Fatherhood is important and always will be, so if Mary and her partner indicate that that is a trivial matter, they're shortchanging this child from the start."
"Mary and Heather can believe what they want," Knight said, "but what they're seeking is to force others to bless their nonmarital relationship as marriage" and to "create a culture that is based on sexual anarchy instead of marriage and family values."
John Stemberger
Stemberger, a personal injury attorney and former political director for the Florida GOP, is the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Counsel/Florida Family Action, a state affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.
Stemberger is leading the petition drive to put on next year’s ballot a constitutional amendment to ban equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, which is already banned by statute. While a 2006 effort fell short, as of September 5, Florida4Marriage.org claimed to have gathered 594,000 of the 611,000 signatures they need to submit by February 1, making it likely that the amendment will be on the ballot in 2008.
Ken Blackwell
Blackwell is most famous as the controversial Ohio secretary of state during the 2004 election, overseeing voting laws while moonlighting as state co-chair for Bush/Cheney. But he has a long history of far-right activism on economic and civil rights issues, and in 2004 Blackwell forged an alliance with the Religious Right as he campaigned for an anti-gay ballot measure. By 2006, when Blackwell ran for governor, this alliance had grown into a church-based political machine, with megachurch pastors Rod Parsley and Russell Johnson taking Blackwell to rallies of “Patriot Pastors,” who signed on to a vision of a Christianity under attack by dark forces, in need of “restoration” through electoral politics. “This is a battle between the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell,” declared Johnson.
Blackwell’s gubernatorial bid failed, but he continues his career as a right-wing activist with affiliations with the Family Research Council and the Club for Growth, as well as a column on Townhall.com.
Katherine Harris
Harris is well known for her controversial role in Florida’s 2000 presidential election debacle, when she served as both secretary of state, overseeing a “purge” of voter rolls as well as the recount itself, and as a state co-chair for Bush/Cheney. She was elected to the U.S. House in 2002 and 2004, and spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in both 2002 and 2003.
In 2006 Harris made a quixotic Senate run, during which she heavily courted the Religious Right. In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, she implied that her opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson, was not a Christian, saying, “[I]f you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong.” She also advised people to disbelieve “that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state.”
Tom Minnery
Minnery is vice president for public policy at Focus on the Family and a frequent spokesman for the group. He is the author of “Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture,” arguing that society should be “changed from the top down morally.” Focus on the Family, with a combined budget of over $160 million, promotes far-right positions on social issues to millions of Americans through radio, print, and the web, and Focus founder James Dobson is probably the single most influential figure on the Religious Right.
“There are more than enough Christians to defeat the Left," Minnery said at a rally in South Dakota. "There are a lot of pastors who didn't want to be seen as an 'activist,' but this issue of marriage has left them with little choice but to get involved."
Posted by Ezra at 3:05 PM | Permalink
July 19, 2007
The Return of Blackwell?
Ken Blackwell’s far-right campaign for Ohio governor in 2006 was structured around intensive “Patriot Pastor” church organizing, but nonetheless failed by a large margin. Since then, Blackwell has joined the ranks of right-wing activists at the Family Research Council, the Club for Growth, Ohio’s Buckeye Institute, and Townhall.com.
Now, there’s a rumor that Blackwell is eyeing a future Senate run. The next Ohio Senate election is in 2010, but the incumbent is a fellow Republican, George Voinovich. A primary challenge is not out of the question, though: Blackwell’s associates at the Club for Growth specialize in right-wing challenges to “Republicans in Name Only,” and he has a history of disagreement with Voinovich.
Back in 1997, when a court ruled that the state must rectify grossly unbalanced school funding, then-Gov. Voinovich proposed a one percent sales tax increase. “Everyone recognizes if we are going to respond to the … decision, we need more money” at the state level,” he said.
But Blackwell warned against letting schools “pick the pockets of taxpayers” and proposed instead somehow shrinking the state government across the board. In an unusual move for a state treasurer, Blackwell released a 30-second TV ad railing against “special interests” – presumably including the governor – who “tell us the only answer is even more state taxes,” and pushed vouchers as the solution to school “reform” instead of adequately funding the poorest schools.
More recently, Voinovich sharply criticized Blackwell’s 2006 effort to implement a “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights”-style constitutional stricture against spending at the state and local level. (Blackwell eventually abandoned the idea, which he had hoped would drive his campaign for governor.)
Voinovich doesn’t seem worried: “Give me a break,” was his response.
Posted by Ezra at 5:50 PM | Permalink
June 14, 2007
CBN Buys 'Patriot Pastors' Spin on Electioneering
In the past year, the IRS has investigated some churches over whether their political advocacy exceeded their non-profit parameters in the tax code -- in which contributions are private and tax deductible – and pushed into the realm of regulated political action committees that give up some of the subsidies for charity and are required to disclose their work on behalf of candidates for office. Yesterday, reporter Michael Haverluck of Pat Robertson’s CBN looked at this complex issue, and whittled it down to its corresponding far-right talking point:
Will pastors' ability to speak to their congregations about social and moral issues erode, or will their appeals to the First Amendment protect this right?
Haverluck cited as an example the activities of World Harvest Church of Ohio, led by televangelist Rod Parsley. Parsley, along with fellow Columbus-area megachurch pastor Russell Johnson, partnered with Ken Blackwell for a series of church “policy briefings” and political rallies, encouraging pastors across the state to mobilize their members to “vote their values” – all while Blackwell was running for governor. At issue was not “speak[ing] … about social and moral issues” so much as the pastors’ apparently brazen use of their churches to campaign for a candidate. Their efforts to build a new church-based political machine are described in People For the American Way’s report on these so-called “Patriot Pastors.”
In Haverluck’s telling, Parsley just happened to bump into Blackwell a couple of times:
Though Pastor Rod Parsley invited Republican and Democratic candidates to World Harvest Church's events, only Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell showed up.
Blackwell is a conservative Christian who opposes abortion and gay marriage. His stance on these issues with Parsley motivated 56 liberal clergy to call for in an IRS investigation.
One complaint accuses Parsley of supporting Blackwell's run for governor by letting him speak at events. Another claims that Parsley planned on having Blackwell on his radio spots, a baseless allegation denied by the pastor and the politician.
It is also contested without evidence that Parsley's "Reformation Ohio" project, aiming to register 400,000 new voters, seeks only conservatives.
In fact, Parsley and Johnson hosted Blackwell as the featured guest speaker at numerous events, in which the candidate was honored with some award or endorsed explicitly from the stage. Parsley even flew Blackwell to one “Patriot Pastor” function on a church-owned plane. This campaign was only part of a broader agenda to promote Blackwell at bigger and bigger rallies featuring famous religious-right leaders, leading up to the primary election and beyond, and indeed including radio spots featuring Blackwell. The radio spots and the rallies with James Dobson never materialized, but far from being a “baseless allegation,” this plan was posted publicly on Johnson’s “Ohio Restoration Project” web site in 2005: you can read it here.
Blackwell’s lopsided loss in 2006 was certainly a major setback to Parsley’s efforts to build a “Patriot Pastor” political machine, but don’t count the charismatic pastor out: His new book, “Culturally Incorrect,” is currently 15 on Publisher’s Weekly’s bestseller list.
Posted by Ezra at 4:55 PM | Permalink
May 2, 2007
'Patriot Pastor' Televangelist’s Voucher-Funded School Employs Uncertified Teachers
Although Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) has said he wants to eliminate the state’s troubled private-school voucher program, the Republican-controlled state House yesterday passed a budget maintaining the program, and the state Senate is apparently poised to do the same. The Columbus Dispatch reports on one parochial school that fails to meet the lowered requirements for private schools to receive state money: Harvest Preparatory Academy, operated by televangelist Rod Parsley’s World Harvest megachurch.
About 500 students attend Harvest Preparatory Academy. Thirty-six teachers and two aides educate them.
But only eight are licensed, the Ohio Department of Education says. And more than one-third of staff members hadn't had a background check more than midway through the school year.
Parsley is a major player in Ohio Republican politics. Along with Russell Johnson, another area megachurch pastor, he organized a political machine of so-called “patriot pastors” that in effect functioned as a church-based campaign arm for Kenneth Blackwell’s 2006 bid to defeat Strickland for governor. Blackwell, who once proposed eliminating all state funding of public schools, made expanding the voucher program a signature of his campaign, which lost by a wide margin.
“Harvest Prep has a problem, and we knew about it,” said a state department of education spokesman, although apparently only now is the department conducting rudimentary inspections of voucher-funded private schools, and beginning to uncover basic certification problems. Although a spokesman for the school insists that “all K-12 teachers have at least a bachelor's degree” and thus “easily meet or exceed the state of Ohio's training and certification requirements,” neither statement appears to be true, according to the Dispatch:
Harvest Prep says it requires its teachers to have bachelor's degrees, but the state says that's not good enough: Teachers have to have at least a "non-tax" teaching certificate. That allows people with college degrees to teach in private schools without undergoing the more rigorous requirements of a regular teaching degree.
At least one teacher, Will Dudley, doesn't have a college degree. The former Ohio State University basketball player, who teaches middle-school English and science and coaches the Harvest Prep basketball team, was featured in a March Dispatch story about players who haven't graduated.
Beyond basic certification and criminal background checks, a deeper inspection of Ohio’s voucher program could uncover more grievous problems, like those found after the first five years of Cleveland’s voucher experiment. In addition to siphoning money away from public schools and into (almost entirely) religious programs, these schools performed poorly, even while often excluding students on the basis of “special education status, disabilities, behavioral problems, academic performance, religious affiliation or other factors.” Some schools were even found, after years of operation, to be defrauding the state and keeping children in unsafe buildings.
Posted by Ezra at 12:23 PM | Permalink
April 6, 2007
Blackwell Ignoring Ohio Voters’ 37 Percent Solution
Former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell may have decided to get back into public life, but he does not seem to have learned much from his devastating loss in last year’s election. Blackwell ran for governor of Ohio last year with an education policy platform based solely on his support for school defunding, the “65% Deception,” and vouchers. Blackwell’s opponent – now Governor Ted Strickland - expressed his principled opposition to vouchers throughout the campaign.
Blackwell’s full-throated advocacy of publicly funded private school vouchers earned him praise from some of the nation’s most ardent advocates of school privatization.
For instance, voucher warrior and affirmative action foe Clint Bolick said the voucher movement “has no greater friend than Ken Blackwell.” And voucher pusher Patrick Byrne, also the impresario of the “65% Deception,” praised Blackwell’s “passion” for vouchers. Voucher backers made sure that the money kept rolling in. Blackwell’s campaign received at least $100, 000 from voucher groups such as Bolick’s Advocates for School Choice
But on Election Day, Blackwell received just under 37% of the vote.
In spite of that dramatic evidence that vouchers and other privatization schemes do not enjoy wide-spread public support in Ohio, and research showing the same nationally, Blackwell soldiers on. In his first published column since joining the staff of the Family Research Council, Blackwell attacks Governor Strickland’s groundbreaking plan to eliminate the EdChoice voucher program and redirect the money back to Ohio’s public schools:
Calling school vouchers "undemocratic" and charter schools a "dismal failure," Gov. Strickland, in his first major public policy address, slammed the door of educational opportunity on thousands of poor children and crushed the hopes of their parents.
By denying these children the equal access to a quality education that choice programs offer, he also denied that the bloated public education bureaucracy and its entrenched unions have failed our children.
Despite Blackwell’s assertion that voucher programs offer students “equal access,” private schools can choose who to accept – many deny admission to all students with special needs – and students who currently receive vouchers do not have the ‘choice’ to attend any school they wish. Last year, Ohio voters had a choice, and elected a governor openly committed to funding and strengthening Ohio’s public schools – and focusing on proven reforms – as the best way to ensure that all children have access to a quality education.
Posted by Kevin at 2:08 PM | Permalink
April 4, 2007
Ken Blackwell Joins FRC
To “build up the economic and fiscal dimension.” Plus: He joins Club for Growth. Meanwhile: LaRue retires.
Posted by Ezra at 11:59 PM | Permalink
Older Ken Blackwell posts: