The Miracle Workers

Cortés is flirting with the Democrats, or at least they're flirting with him. Since June, he has received several calls from Obama and has met with Clinton and Bill Richardson. Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which represents more than 17,000 churches, also senses a changing mood. If Democratic candidates had called him in 2004, Rodriguez says, he's not sure he "would have even picked up the phone." But now "the GOP has completely abdicated … the evangelical Hispanic vote as a result of the immigration-reform debacle …. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Democratic Party."

Clinton, Obama and John Edwards all have senior staffers in charge of reaching out to religious groups. "There's a lot of common ground here with evangelicals on the genocide in Darfur, ending human trafficking and making sure that religious liberty is not static around the world," says Burns Strider, director of faith-based operations for the Clinton campaign. (By contrast, talking to evangelicals in 2004 was considered "a waste of resources," says Mara Vanderslice, who was hired by John Kerry only eight months before Election Day to reach out to the faith community.) Obama's national director of religious affairs, Joshua DuBois, says he has contacted more than 75 evangelical leaders since he joined the campaign on its first day. Speaking at an AIDS conference sponsored by the evangelical Rick Warren last year, Obama talked about contraception as a strategy to fight the disease, and "there was a standing ovation," says DuBois. The campaign has hosted more than two dozen "faith and politics" forums in New Hampshire and Iowa and is planning more for South Carolina.

Can the Democrats really become the party of the fundamentalist faithful? By playing footsie with Democrats, at least some evangelicals may be aiming to provoke GOP leaders into giving them more attention. Christian conservatives complain regularly that the Republican Party doesn't hew to their agenda, but they've almost always pulled the red levers in the end. "We're still kind of frozen in the twilight zone with many of the Republican candidates," says Tony Perkins, who heads the conservative Family Research Council. "If the Democrats follow through with substantive policy initiatives that reflect their newfound faith, they could make headway. But it's got to be more than just talk." Darkly, he warns there is always the option of "a third-party candidate for president." That's a signal to both parties: show us some love … or else.

© 2007