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DeMoss

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Why evangelicals could support this Mormon

By: Mark DeMoss

April 25, 2007 12:29 PM EST

 

 

Last fall near Boston, a dozen evangelical leaders joined me for a three-hour conversation in the living room of then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who, as the world knows, is a Mormon. Over soup and sandwiches, the Republican presidential hopeful took questions about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, immigration, government spending, taxes, the Supreme Court, abortion, stem cell research and the federal marriage amendment. Two of his lunch guests quizzed him about faith — about Jesus and salvation.

 

The meeting broke ground, if only for bucking conventional wisdom that evangelicals would reject out of hand a Mormon running for president. I would not presume to think that the governor converted all of his lunch guests to his campaign. But, having spent my entire life in evangelical circles, I will say that I do believe many evangelicals will conclude they can — and indeed will — support this Mormon in 2008.

 

A month before this luncheon, I'd spent an hour in Romney's office, wanting to hear firsthand his vision for the country. After studying his life and career for a number of months, I told the governor that not only could I support him (a number of evangelicals have said as much), but also that I would support him. (I further told him I was not for hire. I was looking for a good candidate, not a client for my PR firm.)

 

 

I have often been asked whether evangelical voters could find their vision for president in a man of another faith, and specifically a Mormon. Then it struck me: This is the wrong question. To evaluate a candidate solely on religion is unfair to both the candidate and the religion. The better question is: Could I vote for this Mormon? That Catholic? This Baptist?

 

For example, there are Mormons who would not get Mitt Romney's vote (and, he tells me, Mormons who would probably not vote for him). Similarly, there are Southern Baptists I would not vote for. So, could I vote for a Mormon? It depends on who the Mormon is.

 

For years, evangelicals have been keenly interested to know whether a candidate shared their faith. I am now more interested in knowing that a president represents my values than I am that he or she shares my theology. In fact, in terms of values, evangelical Christians have more in common with most Mormons than we do with liberal Southern Baptists, or those of any other faiths and denominations who promote abortion rights and are attempting to redefine marriage.

 

For decades, evangelicals have proudly worked side by side with conservative Catholics, Jews and, yes, Mormons on issues of life, the family, gambling, pornography and Israel, to name a few. Why, then, couldn't we be governed by someone from one of these other religions?

 

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, himself an evangelical, wrote, "If an ambulance hits me, I care less where or how the driver worships than I do about his sense of direction to the nearest hospital. It troubles me not that a Mormon might be president. It does trouble me a great deal that so many people would think a person's faith — whether one shares it or not — should be the only reason to deny someone the presidency."

 

So while Mitt Romney and I spend Sunday mornings in different congregations, we share a public policy grounded in the belief that there is "more than me, more than now," and the evidence shows in his life and work.

 

  • He has been married to his high school sweetheart for 37 years, and together he and Ann have raised five sons.

 

  • He believes (to the political right of his own church) that life begins at conception and should be protected at all costs — a conviction informed and strengthened by extensive research on the issue of human embryo cloning.

 

  • In a state where the opposition party enjoyed an 85 percent majority in the legislature, Romney boldly staked out unpopular positions on stem cell research (though his wife has multiple sclerosis) and gay marriage. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, "Few mainstream politicians have stepped up to make a principled case in support of that timeless definition of marriage, and none has done so as cogently as Romney."

 

But governing a nation of 300 million people with a budget of $2.5 trillion requires more than conviction on these few issues, which is why I really like Mitt Romney. Before he was a politician, he was a successful businessman, turning around the management consulting firm Bain & Co. from the brink of financial collapse, and then founding Bain Capital, one of the nation's most successful venture capital and investment companies, with $5.9 billion under management.

 

Romney then rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from a bribery scandal, answering a call to serve as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. When he arrived, the organization was $379 million in debt; when he finished (having donated his three years of compensation to charity), it turned a $100 million profit. Romney organized 23,000 volunteers and oversaw an unprecedented security mobilization just five months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

 

On his return to Massachusetts, Romney was elected governor (again forgoing his salary) and proceeded to turn a $3 billion deficit into a budget surplus of nearly $1 billion without raising taxes or borrowing money. His 26 fellow Republican governors at the time elected him chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

 

Writ bold between those storylines are character, vision, integrity, leadership, courage, intelligence, great capacity, problem-solving, loyalty, experience — and faith. Surely if one-third of white evangelicals could vote to reelect Bill Clinton in 1996, we can open our minds to a Mormon defending pre-born life and marriage between a man and a woman.

 

Looking now to 2008, if I were to support a presidential candidate other than Mitt Romney, I would have two options. The first would be to select a candidate who shares my values and is an evangelical (and some fit this description) but has little record of turning budgets from red to black and solving complex problems (and little chance of raising the kind of money now necessary to survive the front-loaded primary process).

 

Or I could back an experienced politician who does not well represent my values and hope to influence him religiously (a strategy that historically has marginal success, at best).

 

No, wait, there is a third option, and that's the one Karl Rove believes was exercised by 4 million evangelicals in 2000: I could stay home. The problem with that option is that it violates another evangelical tenet: a Christian citizen's duty to vote.

 

In this election, therefore, given the facts and these options, I believe I'll go with this Mormon.

 

Mark DeMoss is president of the DeMoss Group, an Atlanta-based public relations firm that works primarily with evangelical organizations.

 

TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company

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