Huckabee: Evangelical Christians Now Have a Chance to Lead GOP

Touting his presidential candidacy, Mike Huckabee tries to rally support from social conservatives in Michigan. (By Alex Brandon -- Associated Press)

Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor who heads the Orlando megachurch Northland, A Church Distributed, said his congregants are particularly receptive to Huckabee's message because the candidate combines economic and religious populism.

"Especially with the economic insecurity people are feeling, they like that there's a leader who, because of his religious belief, really wants to care for everybody," said Hunter, who recently announced that he is backing Huckabee in the upcoming Florida primary. "It's about evangelicals who are willing to care for people who are hurting, who are marginalized."

Huckabee's aides have been eager to dismiss the notion that he is only a Christian candidate, and Huckabee complained Saturday in Grand Rapids that debate questions about his faith are of "an unconstitutional nature," since the Constitution forbids a religious test for potential officeholders.

Nevertheless, Huckabee's core constituency remains conservative Christians. At the Michigan pastors' meeting, he encouraged them to "mobilize people of like mind and spirit" by tapping their e-mail lists and phone lists. That strategy helped him in Iowa, where about 80 percent of his voters identified themselves as "born again" or "evangelical." His views on many policy issues, such as health care, are not specific, but he supports constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and abortion, and has suggested that he would be comfortable displaying the Ten Commandments in the White House.

In South Carolina, where Huckabee will appear on Sunday at two church services, rallies are filled with people who tell him "I'm praying for you" when he shakes their hand. On Friday evening, after a long day of campaigning, he stopped at a basketball game of Christian home-schooled children in St. John's, a small town in western Michigan.

The success of Huckabee's candidacy has suggested that many evangelical Christians no longer look to figures such as televangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson. Robertson, who finished a strong second in Iowa's 1988 caucus behind the power of Christian activists, endorsed Giuliani this time, to little effect among religious conservatives.

Ed Rollins, Huckabee's campaign chairman, said he thinks there is "some frustration in the evangelical community" that electoral victories have not provided more results on issues important to them.

Fulton Sheen, a conservative religious activist in Michigan who switched his support from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to Huckabee on Saturday, said, "There is little difference in faith and values issues" between Huckabee and President Bush. And in interviews, many Huckabee supporters express disappointment with Bush, but on issues such as the war rather than religion.

Instead, what Huckabee seems to have tapped into is what he is himself: a traditional Republican who advocates keeping taxes low and maintaining a strong military, but with strong roots in the social conservative movement.

It makes sense, said GOP pollster David Winston, that Huckabee has established a "Christian brand" in a party in which evangelicals will represent the majority of voters in some states.

But to win the presidency, Winston said, Huckabee would need to establish a following among the 75 percent of the electorate who are not white evangelicals.

"If he's going to win, he's going to figure out how to do that," Winston said.

Eilperin reported from Washington.