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Election 2002: What happened? What's next?
With Republicans grasping control of the Senate, expanding their House majority, and holding down anticipated state Governor gains by Democrats on Election Day, religious activists and mainstream newspapers are focusing on Christian and prolife influence at the polls.

The Washington Times says religion and life ethics issues played a huge role in the Republican wins: "A mobilized conservative religious vote probably swept Republicans to victory in Georgia and the Carolinas [and] prolife Catholics and Protestants made the difference for the GOP in Missouri."

FoxNews exit polls showed that 16 percent of voters were in the "conservative Christian political movement." Political observers told the Times that strong motivating topics for voters were marriage and abortion.

"Once again, those who expected the pesky Christian conservatives to go away have been shocked," wrote Marvin Olasky in World magazine. "The funeral for Christian influence in American politics is still a long way off. Providentially, millions of Bible-oriented voters did not listen to those who advised giving up on politics."

Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America (CWA), said in a press release that regardless of party lines, "the prolife stand was a decisive factor in the Republican takeover of the Senate." CWA's vice president for government relations said prolife issues were not important to Republican voters alone. Michael Swartz said in a press statement: "If that were the case, you would not have seen prolife Democrats like Tim Holden (D-Pennslyvania) and Mike Michaud (D-Maine) winning … while pro-abortion Republicans like Connie Morella (R-Maryland) were going down."

At least one Democrat candidate has left the party over the abortion issue. Jesse Quakenbush lost a state representative race in Texas but says his own party worked against him because he is prolife,. "They say they are an open party and they are accepting of anyone that wants to be a member of their party and then they have a viable candidate in myself and actively campaign against me because of my stance on abortion," Quakenbush told Amarillo television station KAMR.

The CWA also said that American voters were frustrated by Democrat obstruction in judicial appointments. A press release said, "Seizing the day will require holding Senate Democrats to their words and preventing them from repeating their guerilla tactics."

Ron Torossian, media director for the Christian Coalition, told the Washington Times that his organization played a part in the win. The group widely distributed voter guides (mainly through the Internet) and takes credit for getting many Christians to the polls. "Many of the races were so close that I think people wanted to get out and make a difference," Torossian said.

Some Christian activists and tactics were directly employed in the Republican victories this week, most notably former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed. The Washington Post demonstrates why the Republican Party did so well by using Georgia, where Reed now heads the state GOP, as an example. Democratic incumbents were defeated in the House, Senate, and the Governor's mansion. The Post explains that one major part of Reed's strategy was to convince Republican candidates they had a better chance of winning as a team than they did running individual races.

Others are directly blaming the Democrats for their own loss. In his roundup of media thoughts on the election, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote that there are two schools of thought on why the Republicans' big day happened. One theory is that the Democratic Party ran a bad national campaign. "The other," Kurtz writes, "is that they ran such a horrifying, inept, intellectually dishonest and soulless campaign that they have dug themselves into a dark pit from which they may not emerge for decades."

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46