Posted on 06/01/2007 3:05:11 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
Two former aides hired to spearhead religious outreach for presidential candidate John McCain say ... that McCain's top campaign strategists are intent on winning votes of religious voters without having to develop serious ties to faith communities.
The aides, who were fired in early April after roughly three months on the job, said the campaign staff ... pressed them to collect church directories—a controversial tactic—as the centerpiece of a strategy to woo "values" voters.
"In the end, you came away with the strong sense that they had contempt for the faith-based community," says Marlene Elwell, one of those fired staffers. Elwell, a prominent Christian-right activist, was hired by McCain in December 2005 to be national director of his "Americans of Faith" coalition. "The way we were being treated it was as if we had leprosy."
The McCain campaign said the aides' dismissals were performance-related and were part of a broader staff reshuffling earlier this spring that grew from weaker-than-expected fundraising.
Judy Haynes—a former top Christian Coalition official hired to work under Elwell—had an assessment similar to Elwell's, saying in a separate interview that the campaign exhibited "a contempt for Christians."
"It's an attitude about the Christian community that they don't like to have to do [outreach] but that they need to do it," Haynes said, referring to the McCain campaign's religious outreach plan. "Like, if we can get what we want without having to get too close [to religious people] and not make a big display, we'll do it."
Haynes said she was particularly disturbed by what she called the campaign's overreliance on collecting church directories as an organizing strategy. "The campaign plan to get the [religious] vote is to rape and pillage the church [membership] lists, and we didn't want to do that."
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
“Nobody likes you.Nobody” Not true. The MSM loves him and he is their Republican candidate.
I would be interested in knowing how the McCain campaign sought to obtain chuch directories, which are usually only made available to church members.
Bob Heckman has certainly been around. In 1995, Rich Lowry had this to say about him in a National Review article:
In the early 1980s Bob Heckman, ousted as executive director of Young Americans for Freedom, challenged his dismissal in a drawn- out, bitter lawsuit. He eventually moved on to a rocky career in the conservative movement that one activist describes as leaving "body bags coast to coast." Another longtime activist guesses Mr. Heckman "wouldn't be welcome at any [conservative] coalition meeting I can think of."
Heckman later coordinated the conservative outreach efforts of Phil Gramm's campaign for president in 1996--which fizzled out even before the New Hampshire primary that year.
He should save his money, and much face and quit now. Thompson is the guy.............
I type up and maintain our church directory and nobody outside of church gets one.
I really didn’t think surly buccaneers cared a whole lot about values votes.
McCain could threaten to keel haul all of them!
Argh!
This one. I didn’t know he even paid lip service to us..................
Rather than crafting a message that will appeal to Christian voters, McCain, according to two former aides, seeks to reach out to Christians by filching church directories
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