Are you there, God? It's me, Rudy

An unholy trinity of issues -- abortion, immigration and his messy personal life -- could hurt Giuliani's chances with his key constituency, Catholic voters.

By Thomas F. Schaller

Read more: Republican Party, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Abortion, Politics, Catholicism, Gay Rights, News, John Kerry, 2008 election

Dec. 10, 2007 | Late last spring, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence opened his mail to find an invitation to a local fundraising event for Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Tobin made national headlines when he responded to the invitation by penning a column for the Rhode Island Catholic about Rudy Giuliani's abortion views, chastising the former New York mayor for saying he believes abortion is morally wrong yet supports reproductive choice for women as a matter of public policy.

"Rudy's public proclamations on abortion are pathetic and confusing," wrote Tobin. "[His] preposterous position is compounded by the fact that he professes to be a Catholic. As Catholics, we are called, indeed required, to be pro-life, to cherish and protect human life as a precious gift of God from the moment of conception until the time of natural death. As a leader, as a public official, Rudy Giuliani has a special obligation in that regard."

Catholics, who cast almost a quarter of all votes nationally, and higher shares in swing states like Ohio, are one of the most important voting blocs in the American electorate. In fact, in every presidential election since 1972 the winner of the Catholic vote has won the overall national popular vote, something no other religious group -- Jews, evangelicals, Protestants -- can boast. If Republicans nominate him, barring a surprising late surge from Democrats Joe Biden, Chris Dodd or Bill Richardson, Giuliani would be the only Catholic in the general election. And part of Giuliani's supposed "electability," a selling point to the party faithful, is that he would draw support from "Reagan Democrats" in crucial, and heavily Catholic, Democratic and swing states in the Northeast and Midwest.

Polls of likely Republican primary voters have long shown that Giuliani is a favorite among Catholic Republicans. But if Giuliani's electability in the general election hinges in any way on his co-religionists, he may be in trouble. Problems with Catholics like Bishop Tobin were not hard to predict. It was inevitable that during Republican primary season, some conservative and observant Catholics would raise questions about Giuliani's checkered marital history and his stands on abortion and gay rights. But if he is the nominee next fall, he will also have to contend with three other Catholic constituencies in the general election -- less-observant Catholics, politically moderate Catholics and Latino Catholics -- all of whom may find fault with him for very different reasons.

The short history of Catholic presidential nominees begins in 1928. At that year's Democratic National Convention in Houston, New York Gov. Al Smith overcame resistance by Catholic-wary delegates from Texas and the South to win the nomination on the first ballot. If not for his religion, Smith's progressive platform might have been better received during the general election. Instead, by a 58 percent to 41 percent margin Republican Herbert Hoover crushed Smith, who became the first Democratic nominee since Reconstruction to lose more than one Southern state.

In the wake of the Smith debacle, neither party would run a Catholic for the presidency for another 32 years. John F. Kennedy's religion continued to be a concern for Democrats even after he'd secured the party's nomination in 1960. Today, JFK's famed "the Church does not speak for me" speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of that year is viewed as a glass ceiling moment for Catholic politicians, but at the time some still believed the candidate's faith made him unelectable. The bootlegger's son proved his doubters wrong, if barely so. He won nationally by fewer than one vote per precinct -- squeaking to victory because of wide margins in Catholic neighborhoods in the closely contested states of Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey.

Forty-four years after Kennedy, the Democrats again nominated a Catholic senator from Massachusetts with the initials JFK. Despite facing an incumbent, John Kerry performed rather well nationally in 2004 against President George W. Bush. Following the more recent historical pattern, in losing the general election by less than 3 percentage points, he also lost the overall Catholic vote by 5 percentage points.

If nominated to run in the general election next fall, Rudy Giuliani would be the first Republican Catholic presidential candidate in history. But to predict how he might perform, it's actually instructive to look at how Democrat John Kerry fared in 2004.

Catholicism in and of itself is probably no longer much of a factor, positive or negative, for voters. Despite those early polls showing that Catholic Republicans prefer Giuliani to his GOP rivals, Clemson University political scientist Laura Olson doesn't think the simple fact of Giuliani's religion will prove a boon at the voting booth come next November. "Catholic voters aren't going to turn out en masse for Giuliani any more than they did for Kerry, which they didn't," predicts Olson, author of "Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices." At the same time, says Olson, Rudy's faith won't hinder him. "Being Catholic isn't much of a stigma anymore in the United States -- except at the margins, like some corners of the rural South -- in large part because Catholics have assimilated so thoroughly."

What matters today, instead of denomination, is devotion, and that's where Giuliani's fortunes may parallel Kerry's. To understand the intersection of religion and politics in America, as Akron University's John Green explains in his new book, "The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections," it is now more important to focus on "behaving" and "believing" than "belonging." Put simply, it's more instructive to know how often people attend church than what type of church they attend.

Frequency of church attendance, regardless of denomination, corresponds with conservatism on social issues like abortion. Sixty-three percent of Catholics who go to Mass weekly are antiabortion. In 2004, John Kerry's pro-choice stance was a clear liability among devout Catholics. White Catholics who attended church weekly were 9 percentage points more likely than less frequent attenders to vote for George Bush.

Rudy Giuliani, like John Kerry, is pro-choice. "As a pro-choice former mayor of New York City, it's hard to see how his Catholicism helps him," asserts Sean Casey, associate professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary. "Among moderate and conservative Catholics, because of his position on abortion, Giuliani does nothing for them. In fact, he looks like a turncoat of a worse variety than Kerry because he's a Republican."

Next page: "It's becoming ever more clear that Rudy Giuliani suffers from John Kerry syndrome"