Reed predicted FFC would knock on roughly 500,000 doors in battleground states. Evangelicals road test 2016 strategy

The evangelical movement wants to be back on top of national politics, and to do it it’s borrowing from an unlikely playbook — Barack Obama’s.

Groups like Faith and Freedom Coalition and Susan B. Anthony’s List are beefing up their grass-roots efforts this year, turning to strategies more often embraced by President Obama than the Christian right, like using online data and micro-targeting to reach or visit hundreds of thousands of voters in key counties in states like Colorado, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina — states that will determine whether Republicans gain a majority in the Senate.


The evangelical movement finds itself at a crossroads: Regain relevancy in 2014 after a tough year in 2012 or face an even tougher fight in the next presidential election, when, it fears, Hillary Clinton will be at the top of the ticket, galvanizing liberals all the way down the ballot.

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“The 2014 midterms are a crucial test of evangelical influence and strength,” said Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I think most evangelical leaders understand we are in a period of pretty radical transition in this society.”

Leaders in the evangelical movement understand that public opinion on social issues has changed dramatically since 2000, when the movement helped buoy George W. Bush to the White House and again in 2004. Opposition to gay marriage, once a hot-button ballot initiative to drive voters to the polls, has faded drastically. Meanwhile, only one in 10 young adults identifies as evangelical. And greater acceptance of birth control, premarital sex and cohabitation before marriage has created a cultural distance with the church.

“There are these tectonic shifts that are occurring that are going to be important in 2016 and beyond,” said Dan Cox, research director at the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. “There is sort of a real demographic and cultural challenge.”

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With few red-meat state-ballot initiatives on abortion or marriage, activists are having to make a broader sell to faith voters to get them to the polls.

The challenges aren’t lost on veteran operatives — especially as they eye 2016 and a possible Hillary Clinton presidential run that some fear could fuel a wave election for Democrats.

“I’m hearing mixed reports from people whether or not we are going to see a real surge from our people,” said Charmaine Yoest, veteran conservative activist and head of Americans United for Life.

She and others, like Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed, are trying to ensure that they do.

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“We’re trying to change the turnout model, and we’re trying to educate, motivate, mobilize and turn out as many faith-based voters in these key states as we possibly can,” Reed said. “The main thing we are road-testing is our home visits and our digital. We will look at both of those in our after-action review and determine how decisive they were.”

The group is slated to spend $8 million on the 2014 midterm elections.

Reed predicted FFC would knock on roughly 500,000 doors in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana. The organization has 13 field offices in those five states. It is also continuing to distribute voter guides in churches — sending 20 million pamphlets to 117,000 churches — and is also sending out direct mail to 6 million voters and making roughly 10 million phone calls.

Susan B. Anthony’s List is also focusing on the ground game.

SBA List began building out its ground team in April in North Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana. So far, the group’s canvassers have knocked on nearly 300,000 doors and made calls to more than 350,000 potential voters. With Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in an increasingly tight race, the group has also started mobilizing in Kansas, with plans to knock on 25,000 doors.

“The ground game, the door-to-door human-being-to-human-being element, has faltered in the last three election cycles,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA List.

Dannenfelser said she wants to reignite the anti-abortion movement by focusing on Democratic Senate incumbents’ positions on abortion and the chamber’s inaction on legislation to limit abortions after 20 weeks.

Reed’s FFC is also increasingly focused on expanding its online efforts, spending more on its digital efforts than offline for the first time. The group expects to reach 15 million video viewers online through banner and video ads in Colorado, North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin, Iowa and Florida. Using its database of 33.1 million social conservatives, Reed said, the online effort will touch 6.2 million households in key states.

“There has never been anything like this in the history of the pro-family movement,” Reed said. “What we are doing versus the Christian Coalition is the difference of a Ford Model-T and an Indy race car.”

It’s not just the veteran religious groups trying to make a difference with evangelicals this cycle.

The Republican National Committee is also looking to bolster religious conservatives with outreach and a website it launched several months ago. The site — faithgop.com — is a way the party is looking to reach out to potential voters with videos from pastors talking about how important politics is to their faith, giving churches guidance on getting out the vote and petitions on issues like religious freedom.

RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said in an email that the RNC staff, including Chad Connelly, who was hired to do faith outreach, and Mike Mears, who works with conservative group outreach, have been meeting with tens of thousands of faith leaders across the country.

The Catholics Association has also been active with a digital ad campaign on Facebook focused on abortion and religious liberty. Catholics Association’s Ashley McGuire predicted that the ads will reach more than 2 million Catholic voters by Election Day.

Conservative Christians in Iowa are also trying to ramp up their ground game, with their sights set on electing a Republican, Joni Ernst, to the Senate for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Bob Vander Plaats, president of the social-conservative Iowa-based organization the Family Leader, said it is engaged in a hybrid of education and mobilization efforts including phone banking, door knocking and voter guides. The group has also done a 12-stop regional tour that is concluding this week.

“Iowa is a very retail state; they like to press the flesh,” Vander Plaats said.