Politicians Can Win Elections with Climate
Lessons from experience
Introduction
The stories that follow were shared with CCL on the November 2013 International Call
by Eric Sapp, who has spent most of his career working at the intersection of faith and
politics. A recording of the call, in its entirety, is available on our website. These stories
focus on how Democrats have won elections by reaching out to Evangelical Christians, a
Republican-leaning constituency, and the faith based community at large. The lesson is
clear: Democrats who stand up for the climate can win Evangelicals to their camp, and
Republicans who stand up for the climate can keep them in their camp. There is
substantial upside at no electoral cost. Everyone, therefore, should be advocating for
strong action on moral grounds to fix the climate.
About Eric Sapp:
Eric Sapp, a native of Durham, NC, was Senior Partner at Common Good
Strategies (CGS) prior to co-founding Eleison Group. CGS received significant national
attention following the ’06 election cycle for its groundbreaking faith outreach and
messaging work for the DSCC, Senators Casey and Brown, Governors Strickland,
Granholm, and Sebelius, Rep. Shuler, and the Michigan, Kansas, and Oregon State
Democratic Parties. CGS clients significantly out-performed Democrats nationally
(normally by double-digits) with Protestants, Evangelicals, Catholics, and weekly
churchgoers. Dr. John Green, Sr. Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,
said about CGS’s work that “if Democrats learn a lesson from ’06 and are able to
duplicate these efforts more widely…we could potentially see historic shifts in voting
blocks that would dramatically change the relationship between faith and politics in this
country.” Eric has been a regular speaker on faith and politics on television and radio
shows, most often providing a Democratic perspective on conservative programs. Eric’s
background also includes stints with Representative David Price (D-NC), where he
handled faith and politics, budget, tax, and homeland security issues. Before that, he
worked for Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) on the Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions Committee.
He has his masters of divinity and public policy from Duke University, and now
lives in Northern Virginia with his high school sweetheart and his son Beckett.
*The following transcript has been modified slightly. It was modified to make it more
readable without changing the meaning.
ERIC SAPP BACKGROUND:
I am a Christian, an Evangelical Christian. I got into the work that I have been
doing because I was worried about what I saw happening to the Christian witnesses. It
became entirely lined up with the ideology of a single party. Our work and my entrance
into climate, after the 2004 elections, after we did basically all of the democratic faith
outreach work in that following cycle, ‘05 and ’06; What we found was that climate was
our best way into all these churches that Democrats had honestly never spoken to
previously. We had no relationships with Evangelical Christians. As everybody knows
the “god gap year” in 2004, the best indication that someone was going to vote for Bush,
was not that they were Republican but was that they went to church on a regular basis.
That’s what got Democrats' attention, but this happened because Democrats had not been
talking to them. We were trying to build relationships in ‘06, and very quickly realized
there was a point that we could connect on with climate, what became “creation care”,
environmental stewardship. Connecting there opened doors, started to build relationships.
As officials and national leaders started to talk about climate they changed some of the
voting dynamics, because the voters who were told that the only issues that mattered
were abortion and gay marriage were now being told by their leaders, top leaders in the
Catholic Church, National Association of the Evangelical, major pastors, Rick Warren,
even Pat Robertson saying that climate change is a vital issue that Christians needed to
care about. That had opened the door for a broader discussion.
Now, why does this matter? Some of the stats, the reason that this community is
important to this debate and how they can be helpful in all that we’re trying to do for
climate is: Just about 30 percent of voters are Evangelical Christians. A quarter identifies
as Catholic, another 18 will self identify as mainstream Protestant. All of those people, as
well as all people are more than their faith, but their faith oftentimes heavily influences
how they view themselves and how they view the world. Being able to connect with them
through that faith is vitally important.
We have just completed some polling on how to engage faith folks. It has
highlighted two very important points. Where a lot of us start is that the science is so
overwhelming—and it’s like 98-99 percent of scientists agree. We know the science is
clear on climate change and that is where a lot of us want to start. What we found at the
polling, that was so interesting, was that the top two arguments for the whole population,
for people who are not religious and for religious people are all the same top two
arguments. The science argument… the kind of 99 percent of science, and then the
second argument being that we have a moral obligation to tackle climate change for other
people. What was interesting about the call was that for non-religious people, the science
argument was the most important. For religious people, that moral frame was most
important, but for religious people the science argument was the second most important
argument, and it worked when the entrée was the moral frame. So when you started in the
faith community saying science, science, science and that’s it, you would not move
people as far, but if you started with the moral argument, you met them where they were.
The science argument worked very well and worked much more strongly, and when you
combine those two arguments, those are arguments that persuade over 90 percent of
Americans. Having done a lot of polling on a lot of different issues and our pollster too
when he said this, “we never see numbers like that, where you only have two messages
that are so simple and clear that have such a wide impact.” And so this is the opportunity
and what is so exciting about where we are.
Now, I will caveat, they work with all people, that doesn’t mean that saying those
two things, everyone is going to say “ok, I’m a climate voter only and that’s all I care
about,” but we will be able to bring them along on climate and these are people again, as
Mark said in the beginning, who matter politically. A lot of the faith community, these
will be swing voters, these are voters who can get in Republican circles in places where
often we cannot and so that is the opportunity we have in engaging these communities
and so I’m going to tell some stories now, just kind of explain it since I have had that
highlight that and hopefully we will help you all kind of see more clearly opportunities
on your own communities.
BOB CASEY VS. RICK SANTORUM, 2005:
We worked with Bob Casey in '06 in a Senate run against Rick Santorum. In that
race again we recognized very early on that we cannot beat Santorum without dealing
with the faith issue, and if Santorum carried the same faith numbers he had in his first
election we didn’t stand a chance, so we ran a very concerted, significant state outreach
program, again-- climate being one of the biggest issues. We got the National Association
of Evangelicals to come on board and agreed to host an event on climate, at Messiah
College, which is the big evangelical flagship school in central Pennsylvania. We invited
both candidates to come and Messiah hosted. The students were there, they had faculty
on the panel; Santorum refused to come. Casey shows up, and again, put yourself in
2005, what has just happened in the election. Democrats terrified to go into anything, this
is a right wing, evangelical conservative school, the new democratic candidate walks in,
he walks in to a standing ovation, is able to give a speech without any opposition on the
importance of being a good steward of the environment. Casey talks about how this is
going be one of the key issues in his campaign. The first question from the students
directed at him, “why was Rick Santorum afraid to show up here today and talk about
this?”, and it just got better from there. When Casey left that meeting he said this, and he
said this a number of times after elections, that that was the first time that he truly
believed he was going to win and saw the path forward, and it was all because of climate,
and this response that he was not expecting from a community that had generally been
considered a Republican stronghold.
JENNIFER GRANHOLM VS. DEVOS:
Jump over to Michigan, Governor Jennifer Granholm who is running against Dick
DeVos. [Granholm] held an event to give a talk at another evangelical flagship schools
that was in DeVos’ home town, we actually met in the auditorium that was named after
his family, he had done the Amway stuff, and they had given all this money, so we were
having an event in an auditorium named after our opponent at this school. The campaign
was so worried about this that they actually did not put up a press release about the event;
they were worried about what the response was going to be. Granholm again went, the
main point of her talk, the main connecting place was “creation care”. She walks into a
standing ovation from the entire audience, there are a bunch of religious media there and
the press, and the religious media in western Michigan was overwhelmingly positive,
glowing, talking about how strong the response was from the students. This happened
about a week and a half before the election and Dick DeVos changed his schedule at the
end of the election to come back to his home town and spend the last three days of the
election not campaigning in battleground places around the state, but campaigning back
in his home town because his campaign was so worried about what had happened when
Granholm was able to connect on climate change.
HINDU VS. EVANGELICAL, 2006:
Last example from 2006, take us over to Kansas. State Senator named Raj Goyle,
this was for people who think, “Bob Casey was pro life, Granholm was pro choice, but a
strong Christian, and how do I do this, maybe I’m not as Christian I don’t go to church all
the time”, Raj Goyle was a Hindu. He was running in Wichita, Kansas in a heavily white
evangelical district against a white evangelical incumbent. He beat that incumbent and he
wrote us afterwards, we worked with him; we worked with Sebelius, we were doing a lot
of climate work, working with nuns and others in the state. He wrote to us afterwards and
said the reason he won was this issue and all the outreach he did through it. He met
people where they were, he reached out to the faith community…he didn’t tell them why
they were wrong or tell them why they needed to believe what he believed. Instead he
sought to understand why they believed what they believed, and find ways to connect,
and you had a Hindu at Wichita Kansas beat an incumbent, white evangelical in 2006 on
this issue.
These results will carry in many places around the country in 2006 candidates
with whom we worked and did the faith outreach, again with climate being the main key
issue…They performed 20 points better than other Democrats with white Protestants in
an election where we made big gains with Catholics, they outperformed other Democrats
by 10 points with Catholics. This was a huge, huge shift that we saw, and that is kind of
what got the parties' attention on all these issues and bumped up to a certain extent,
climate, but also the faith outreach up and the party from 2006 to 2008.
One other point that I think is really important looking at the 2006 time: This was
an area and this is where I’ll go to people who in general in the faith outreach side maybe
that’s where we work with candidates who aren’t strong Democrats etc. If you went
around the country and worked with a bunch of candidates, the only candidates who ran
ads on climate in 2006 and the only candidates who talked explicitly about poverty in
2006 were candidates involved in faith outreach and the Democratic candidates involved
in faith outreach. They had the checkbox on their website, they fill out the voter things
and send them back to their groups, the Democrats were good on this, but the people that
ran on it, the faith part, is what did it and that’s where the coalition on faith can be so
significant to us -- It creates another political lever that matters to the people we are
trying to influence.
HARRY REID, 2008:
Two other case studies, taking it to 2008, from the advocacy side: Harry Reid
running for reelection but early on we were trying to raise climate as an issue with him,
trying to get him to champion it, obviously you had the bill now moving through
Congress past the House going through the Senate. We had done a lot of organizing in
Nevada on faith outreach, explicitly around climate and set up a tele-town hall. We talked
to Harry Reid, this took us about 6 months to get him to agree to it. Through outreach and
through engaging these churches pastors we were able to setup this tele-town hall on the
moral and national security implications on climate change. We had a person on the
ground, and we worked with a number of climate groups in Nevada to build this up. We
had 20,000 people call in to this tele-town hall with Senator Reid on the moral and
national security implications on climate-- the most they had ever had on a tele-town hall
before was 3,000 people. This happened the same day that Sarah Palin kicked off her
national tour out of Harry Reids hometown. They were then able to run a series of ads
that Sarah Palin had a crowd of 500 we had 20,000 people call in to us. At this point I
was working exclusively on the advocacy side, we weren’t doing the political work on
that race, and we had been trying to get them on the climate trail, trying to get attention.
It’s a classic thing: you make calls, they take a while to get back, etcetera, but for the rest
of the year, if I called their political director, I’d have a call back in 5 minutes because we
delivered something that they valued.
STORY 6:
Last example: This segues in the end to the climate bill case study. In 2008 we
were the lead consultants for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Red
to Blue Program, so we worked with all the pick-up opportunities the Democrats thought
they would have in 2008. Over 40 of our candidates won in that program, many of them
in very red districts, all of them doing faith outreach and all of them leading with climate
because that was our connecting point to these people. Again, it brought a huge swing of
Democrats into Congress.
Another example at the Senate level, Senator Hagan in 2008: Obviously Hagan is
North Carolina, and when she was running, the Obama campaign actually shut down all
of their own faith outreach programs in North Carolina so there was nothing happening at
O.F.A. on faith in North Carolina, Hagan was the only one doing it. Again, climate was
the lead on everything Hagan was doing. In 2008, Obama’s big year, she outperformed
Obama by 10 points with evangelical voters of all races. And then it was about 5 or 6
points of Catholic voters in the state, engaging in these issues was something that
worked.
On the Climate Bill:
Now I’ll explain why a lot of us look back on the climate bill and it is obviously a
sore point. It was something we thought was so close but didn’t come to fruition. When
the climate bill kicked off in 2009, there were over 50 members of Congress who had
been our former clients, most of them in swing districts so we knew them, were engaging
them directly with them and had a very open conversation with them. As the bill moved
forward, C.E.W., the coalition of climate groups began to realize that moral and national
security arguments were the most resonant in this debate and especially with the
members that we needed to swing, and so towards the end of the debate they actually ran
almost all of their paid media through American Values Network, where we would team
up pastors and generals and ads at events etc. just to create this frame, and what would
happen is we would have a lot of the climate community show up. We would frame our
issue in terms of our values and security and it was a way to build it.
A lot of people look back and say the bill failed for lots of reasons. Having been
on the inside, my very strong experience and diagnosis is what happened is that as we
were watching it and counting the votes, is that we had a bunch of Democrats in the
House lined up, we had a big majority to pass the bill, and 3 weeks before the vote in the
House the word came down from the White House to all of our allies that “now is the
time to push for Obamacare”, and there was a massive swing -- as progressives who care
both about healthcare and climate – shifted their focus. The groups that were fighting us
on climate didn’t care that much about healthcare, so the coal companies and others were
able to keep their pressure going, lobbyists and others were flooding them while our side
turned its attention to Obamacare and we lost in the last 3 weeks.
I remember talking to one office where they said their call volume had been equal
to letters, equal request for events, and then in the last two weeks, after that shift had
happened; they went to 5 to 1 again. That was one of the offices that we lost. So all of a
sudden we go from this huge momentum in the House, where we are probably going to
win by 40 or more votes, and a lot of them slip away. We still pass it in the House, but we
don’t pass it by the same major majority. And, instead of getting the bill done in the
Senate that had already been passed in the House, had the momentum and would have
addressed the biggest issue at the time of economics, it turned instead to healthcare. That
was a double whammy because it killed the momentum of the climate bill going into the
Senate but also, all of my former clients who were in these swing districts, who had taken
hard votes for them on climate, on the president’s bill, backing the bill, knowing they can
take hits, but also believe that if the bill was passed they would win in the end because
they could show the outcome, show the jobs etc., so them being asked to take a
controversial vote, then be left hanging because it wasn’t pushed through the Senate as
they were promised. As a result, a lot of those members, for that reason, refused to back
Obamacare. This then killed that momentum, slowed it down and just jumbled everything
going forward into the Senate, and so when people ask what happened, it wasn’t the
merits of the bill, in my opinion having seen it on the inside, that did it, it was honestly a
strategic mistake and the impact which that had on momentum going into the Senate and
the chilling affect it had on House members supporting Obamacare, which then cycled
back to further slowing the climate bill in the Senate. So those are my stories, that is my
perspective.