Though Lamborn was favored to beat his opponent, a retired Air Force officer named Jay Fawcett, the race had become tighter in the past couple of months than anyone could have predicted when Fawcett launched what was called by local newspaper columnists “a quixotic quest.” But the race became a nail-biter, especially after Rep. Joel Hefley, whose seat was up for grabs Tuesday night, said he refused to endorse his fellow Republican, a “disappointment” running “one of the sleaziest, most dishonest campaigns” he had seen. Even prayer — or the endorsement of the Christian Coalition and the NRA — couldn’t cover up that stinging public condemnation with “moral values” chatter, especially in national elections that hummed with talk of corruption.

Wednesday morning the two candidates were considered to be in a dead heat. In this area, which has elected a Republican to the House ever since the district was first drawn 34 years ago, a victory under these circumstances hardly felt like victory at all. Much less when considering who would be in charge of the House. And forget simply despising Nancy Pelosi’s liberal ways; these folks were deriding the “liberal Republicans” on the five military bases here who expressed anger against “stay the course” war addicts like Lamborn. Accustomed to the confidence that came with their decisive role in recent national elections, the Christian base here seemed shaken. For once, nobody seemed sure that all their prayers would be answered.

As the band struck up a Muzak-y rendition of “Just the Way You Are,” in came the local candidates in their dark suits and American flag ties, smacking their supporters’ shoulders and nervously scanning a screen listing exit polls. The song made for an ironic soundtrack to the scandal surrounding the man whose name has been spoken more in this district this week than any political candidate: Ted Haggard, the fallen pastor of this town’s nerve center, the New Life Church. Before the news broke last week that he had conducted a three-year affair with a male escort, Haggard had campaigned hard for Amendment 43 here, an initiative to ban gay marriage. It was clear that in this political congregation, no one liked him just the way he was.

But by the time the band struck up “The Best Is Yet to Come,” spirits seemed to lift a bit. The numbers coming in on the gay marriage ban, and on a referendum supporting civil unions, looked promising to a crowd that quivered in disgust at any mention of homosexuality, much less homosexuality with equal rights. Of all people, Mike Jones, Haggard’s accuser, was being credited with those returns. A volunteer in a black suit and red shirt named Dave Cavanagh — who calls Dick Cheney, whom he met campaigning this week, a “good man” — says plenty of blasé voters were spurred into action by the notion that Jones came out with his story in order to have an impact on the amendment effort. “That this was used as a political ploy to affect voting made everyone I know really angry. It was a backlash; it benefited the effort,” he said. Jones has said that he publicized his relationship with Haggard explicitly because of the marriage amendment.

Cavanagh was here after campaigning hard for Kent Lambert, a state representative he met when Lambert gave a public showing of slides he put together when he was working the border with the anti-immigration group the Minutemen. Lambert, who calls himself “a man who doesn’t keep his faith a secret, and a social conservative,” and who looks picture-perfect for his role, with his unmovable hair, giant gold ring and lapels crowded with candidate buttons, sees the scandal as helping his various causes. “The idea of someone trying to manipulate their vote gets them out to the polls,” Lambert said. That notion was playing out nationwide, as eight states easily supported prohibiting same-sex marriage. But whether fundamentalists would vote for “the sanctity of marriage” and whether they would vote for candidates who supported the White House’s Iraq fiasco still remained to be seen.

All this talk of the marriage amendment was filler, really, just nervous chatter over the vocalist walking through the crowd with a cordless mike, singing “It Had to Be You,” pointing to local candidates on the floor. Everyone in this room knew that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter had creamed Republican Bob Beauprez at the polls, and as the night stretched on, the House seat was still undecided in favor of Lamborn.

When Lamborn won the primary, his response to the press was “I had to say a prayer and ask that God’s will be done.” One got the sense tonight that plenty of prayers were being whispered around the tables set up in front of the stage.

By the time the coordinator of the Denim and Diamonds ball took the stage to belt out a showy rendition of “Crazy,” the returns were favoring this crowd: Lamborn had pulled into a decisive lead, and gay marriage looked like it would exist only in Mike Jones’ dreams. But the crowd hardly whooped it up praise-style when the numbers were projected onto a screen over the stage. Even when Lamborn finally appeared in the GOP suit-and-red-tie uniform to announce, “Things are looking good,” he was met not with ebullient cries but a polite smattering of applause. Things were looking good for this candidate, sure, but the House he was to serve in was already stacked against him. Senior Republican holy warrior Rick Santorum had been ousted by the time the red pantsuits here were heading to the cash bar. No one even bothered announcing the verdict when the marriage ban was decided by a margin even local voter James Dobson could celebrate.

Meanwhile, Lamborn was biding his time waiting for his opponent to concede. As the band wound up its final set, he talked to reporters about setting his sights on the House Armed Services Committee and made snarky comments about Nancy Pelosi. He commented that the evangelical vote refused to be “sidelined.” And then, as Mr. Biggs’ cleanup staff circulated with garbage bags, asking the last straggling volunteers to gather up their campaign signs, Lamborn took the stage to summon local candidates, winners all. They were given just a moment for lightning-fast speeches — a chance to parade the wives, thank the volunteers, and remind the tiny remaining crowd about “Republican principles” and “Republican revival,” all standard Christian political rhetoric. That rhetoric tonight would be the language of defeat in Missouri Sen. Jim Talent’s campaign: His concession speech opened by giving long-winded thanks to God, but no one here even bothered to do that in their victory speeches. These local wins meant little when the Senate was still hanging in the balance.

Lamborn himself didn’t bother to invoke his faith as he wrapped up what could hardly be called a party. Blinded by the success of the “enemy,” he couldn’t even talk about winning his seat; in fact his quick speech sounded more like an angry concession. “We’ll be able to harness a backlash,” he said. “We’re going to see what the Democrats are made of, and they’re going to do things the voters aren’t happy with. Mark my words.” His words, sure — but for once in this town, not a breath about His Word.

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

Two of Haggard’s parishioners, Tim Singer and his wife, Alicia, say they usually have to drag themselves to vote. This year, they couldn’t wait. “Amendment 43 is half the reason why,” said Tim. “And Referendum I,” which would grant rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples, though without allowing marriage, per se, “is the other.”

The Singers say their neighbors, also members of the New Life Church, who share their voting practices, were all headed to the polls today for the exact same reason they were. Not to vote Republican candidate Doug Lamborn into a congressional seat, or to stem the tides sweeping Democrat Bill Ritter into the governor’s mansion, but “the gay thing,” as Alicia said, plain and simple.

“My kid said to me, ‘Mom. What’s wrong with the world? Now we gotta vote about gay stuff?’” Alicia snorts. “It’s disgusting that we should even have to think about this,” she sighed. “We’re just tired of it all. Not Pastor Ted, way back before that.”

“Yeah, I’m not just voting because of Ted,” said Tim, shaking his spiked blond hair. “I’m voting because of Rosie O’Donnell. No one pisses me off more than her. This gay stuff has gotta stop.”

Diane Hoover, a poll watcher here, says some voters have stepped forward with concerns about their paper ballots, reporting mysterious highlighter markings on the Amendment 43 section of the ballot. It’s unclear if the marks were meant to be over specific words. She’s worried that the ballots won’t scan properly because of the marks, and is investigating the problem, but has yet to hear back from a state supervisor.

Hoover, incidentally, used to work for Republican Sen. James Harvey in the 1960s, but has since “converted” to being a Democrat, since she can’t stand the way the religious right has taken over the GOP, or her town, she says. “It used to mean something very different to be a Republican than this business,” waving a hand in the direction of Haggard’s megachurch New Life across the street from the voting booths. She voted against the ban.

Same-sex marriage bans have passed in every one of the 20 states that have previously included the issue on ballots.

Lamborn is a darling of the religious right - and a former lawyer for Ted Haggard. In the wake of the Haggard scandal, he has tried over the past few days via a bevy of campaign ads to dial down his connections to the evangelical establishment. While his campaign home page may still proudly flash the logos of endorsers like Concerned Women for America and the National Pro-Life Alliance, and boast about his “100% rating from Christian Coalition of Colorado,” his brand-new persona is that of a straight-up Reagan conservative, someone who spends all his time thinking about tax cuts and border issues. Not about his “pro-family” message, and certainly not his Friday evening Bible study.

Fawcett’s run began as what many, including the Lamborn-endorsing Rocky Mountain News, considered to be an “exercise in futility.” The 5th Congressional District has not elected a Democrat since it first came into being 34 years ago. The most recent representative to fill that seat is Joel Hefley, who is retiring. Hefley has notably refused to endorse his would-be GOP successor, publicly charging him with running “one of the sleaziest, most dishonest campaigns” he has seen.

According to Fawcett’s campaign, last night the candidate received a death threat — his third since announcing his candidacy — while his headquarters was being vandalized. Campaign workers arrived at an office where the air was thick with a putrid skunklike aroma. Many of the 200 volunteers expected to come through the office today will be working in gas masks. The office has been vandalized once before, and just a week ago the campaign finance director’s car was similarly scented, while parked in front of the El Paso County Republican Office.

With the race deadlocked, tonight looks like it may be a late one for Fawcett and Lamborn. Lamborn supporters will be watching returns with the candidate tonight at Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center, about 7 miles from the church Lamborn’s buddy Ted Haggard built.

Driscoll blames Haggard’s affair with a male escort not on the former pastor’s homosexuality — which he abhors as much as that other spawn of Satan, feminism, — but on his wife, Gayle Haggard. Why? ‘Cause, he says, Gayle let herself go.

“At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this,” he wrote on his blog. “It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”

As we all know, this argument is as illogical — that a man would have sex with another man because he was turned off by his aging wife, and not because he’s gay — as it is demeaning. How she looks should have no bearing on this. But, I must rise to Mrs. Haggard’s defense, if only to point out that Driscoll is obviously using her as an opportunity for frat-boy girl-bashing of the highest right, guys? high-five! order. Find a picture of Gayle Haggard. It’s easy to do this week, with her husband’s fall from grace splashed over the front pages. And look at her. Come on: She looks fabulous.

Her failing is not in too few hours on the treadmill, but in her beliefs. First, that she should submit to her husband, as she has preached to her women’s ministry in Colorado Springs, and as she and Ted wrote in a book they published this year called “From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime.” (It’s still for sale today at the New Life Church bookstore, and available for your ironic viewing at Amazon.) And second, that he can be healed of his “sickness” — that under the close watch of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, God can cast the gay out, and the girl-crazy boy she married will be hers once more.

With Jesus’ help, her faith asserts, Haggard can be just as straight as the aggressively heterosexual pastor Mark Driscoll, who, on his blog, is quick to explain that his fidelity to his wife — and, thus, the Lord — has everything to do with his blonde bride’s hotness, lest we think he would have married a woman who wouldn’t keep herself up to his specifications. Otherwise how could he have resisted the women who ache to provide him with earthly pleasures?

He writes, “I started the church ten years ago when I was twenty-five years of age. Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God’s grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body.” Yeah, dude!

“Father, we pray that lies would be exposed. That deception would be exposed,” he said during his final appearance in this massive sanctuary in the round. Haggard’s prayers were answered quickly. Just days after his sermon, he was accused by a male escort, Mike Jones, of a three-year sexual relationship.

Even Haggard’s choice of Bible passages on Oct. 29 foreshadowed his fall. From the Old Testament, he preached about God’s rejection of Saul from Israel’s throne. As Haggard told his flock, Saul was cast out for disobedience. “There are positions that God has for us in our life, but by our obedience or our disobedience we will fulfill the calling of that position … And he may, depending on the level of disobedience, reject us personally.”

Haggard then closed his sermon with a blinding smile. “Enjoy the candidates out front, and don’t forget the amendment effort.” He was referring both to the political candidates waiting outside the church to meet some of its 14,000 parishioners, and to Amendment 43, the initiative to ban gay marriage in Colorado. Haggard was a proponent — and, it’s rumored, an author — of Amendment 43.

It’s a dark irony that a political pitch about homosexuality was to be Haggard’s final message to the church he founded two decades ago and built into one of the most powerful megachurches in the nation. Mike Jones says he came forward to expose the hypocrisy of the ginger-haired pastor, who was also the head of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the most important conservative Christian leaders in the country. On many people’s minds here is just how Haggard’s admission will affect both Tuesday’s election, locally and nationally, and future political battles. But the fallout of the Haggard scandal extends far beyond electoral politics. Equally in question is how the long standoff between evangelical and gay Americans will be affected by the revelation of one man’s sexual identity. Will the Haggard scandal decrease tolerance in privately held beliefs and at the polls?

Richard Cizik, the vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who is known to uphold the compassionate side of “compassionate conservatism,” sees the potential for positive change in the sexuality wars. He admits his optimism may seem counterintuitive coming out of such a negatively charged event. “Both communities,” gay and conservative Christian, “are going to have to come to some mutual understandings that might help actually restore some of the broken fabric of this country. Maybe Ted Haggard can help us learn to do that.

“Evangelicals have to acknowledge that there are people in our own churches who struggle with this temptation. Including leaders. We all know Ted has struggled with this issue. That’s shouldn’t be a big surprise. The gay community resents it when we don’t acknowledge it. And he did.”

Cizik is quick to note that instead of carrying the standard-issue homophobic cross, Haggard broke from his evangelical brethren to oppose anti-sodomy laws and invite members of gay-friendly churches to speak and sing at his church, even though he spoke out against homosexuality as recently as last week. But neither Haggard, nor Cizik, nor any other prominent conservative Christian has suggested that it’s time to rethink the notion that homosexuality is an abomination. Never is it seen as anything but sin, failure and rebellion against God. As Cizik notes, the response to Mike Jones may have been less vitriolic than some may have predicted, but it’s still of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” variety, just as it has been for Ted Haggard in churches and Bible study classes across the country.

Haggard himself offered quite a mixed message. Since the scandal exploded on front pages across the nation, some people believe that his complicated example of tolerance mixed with homophobia may leave nothing but intolerance in its wake. Michael Cobb, the author of “God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence,” thinks it will make evangelicals regard anything except withering disapproval of homosexuality as evidence of a personal secret. “If you demonstrate any symptoms of tolerance,” says Cobb, “that might be pointing to something dark lurking in your history. It’s all about suspicion. If Ted Haggard can be a homosexual, then everyone can. That’s the whole message. And if you have a connection to someone who is queer, or even tolerate them, does that rub off on you?”

Cobb grew up in Colorado Springs. He remembers the tension between Haggard’s “sinner loving and sin hating” back when the pastor was building a midsize church called New Life into today’s juggernaut. In the early ’90s, a constant flow of envelopes printed with the New Life logo would arrive in Cobb’s mailbox, filled with tracts about the evils of homosexuality and the importance of the heterosexual nuclear family. “And yet,” Cobb notes, “[Haggard] was more tolerant than other [evangelicals]. One could biographize that today. And people will.”

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It’s not Haggard, however, who gets to write the rhetoric of his sexual history. It’s the nation’s No. 1 homophobe, the godfather of the religious right, the tyrant against tolerance, James Dobson. Dobson’s Focus on the Family campus lies just south of New Life Church off I-25, but his reach is global and his compassion for homosexuality is nil. During Sunday services at New Life, it was announced that Dobson, with a team of two pastors, would be overseeing Haggard’s “therapeutic restoration.”

Just as much as Dobson is certain that Christ is Lord, he believes that homosexuality can be cured, or as a Focus on the Family tract was titled, “There Is Hope for the Homosexual.” Dobson has close ties to Exodus and NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, the two main policy and “research” groups behind the “ex-gay movement,” which maintains that homosexuality is nothing more than an addictive behavior that can be treated with psychological assessment, reconditioning and prayer. As Connecticut pastor Stephen Bennett, a member of the ex-gay movement himself, explains, “Homosexuality by God’s grace isn’t an issue with myself anymore. Hopefully this man is going to get whatever help he needs, like I did.”

Under Dobson’s watch, Haggard’s “problem” is one the religious right can surely solve with “restoration and rehabilitation,” further suggesting to brothers and sisters in Christ that homosexuality is a cancer that must be eliminated by the radiation of faith. Haggard may even be just what the ex-gay movement was waiting for: a testimony of the highest order, a public figure guilty of chronic sin who can emerge cleansed of his desire, a paragon of sparkling heterosexuality. As Tanya Erdetz, author of “Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement,” points out, “His story is perfect for the kind of evidence they like to present. Here’s an example that this is merely a sin or an addiction, that he can emerge redeemed. You can overcome. This is just how they can be anti-gay and talk about themselves as being compassionate. It’s a perfect opportunity.” Michael Cobb points out that Dobson will get to prove through Haggard’s “restoration” that the church is more necessary than ever before, that faith is the “technology of redemption,” as he puts it. “They can show through Haggard that something actually happens. In some ways it’s so scripted, so perfect.”

This is exactly the message playing out in many of New Life’s 1,300 cell group meetings this week, where people gather regularly in small numbers to stretch their faith on different themes, from “Prayer Shield for Prodigals” to “Exemplary Husband, Excellent Wife” and “Bowling for Blessings.” Steve Glaeser leads a group called “Real Men,” which he calls “a band of brothers here to encourage each other and hold each other accountable.” His group studies a book called “Healing the Masculine Soul.” Glaeser says that his group is praying to see their former leader “restored.” He adds, “We believe that is possible only through Jesus. We believe there is a real devil, that there is evil, and that it can attack us. Each of us could potentially succumb to the same as Ted if we do not stay on course.” Glaeser’s message, like Dobson’s message, is clear: Homosexuality is something for which there is no tolerance.

Prior to Haggard, one of the biggest evangelical sex scandals was Jimmy Swaggart’s fall from grace. In 1988, the hugely influential televangelist was exposed for consorting with a prostitute. But among many Bible-believing Christians, Swaggart was a slick media presence, an icon of an age when the Bible was used as a key to open the bank accounts of gullible viewers across the country. Put simply, he was not the real deal. Not like Ted Haggard, driving a truck in high-riding jeans, accenting every sermon with self-deprecating humor, known to every member of his congregation — and beyond — as just plain “Ted.” For the many Christians who consider Dobson to be the nations disciplinarian father, or Robertson to be the crazy uncle bankrolling the family, or Falwell the anachronistic grandpa making proclamations from his La-Z-Boy, and those prosperity ministers and faith healers on television to be the charlatan heirs to the house that Swaggart built, Haggard stood apart.

Yet Swaggart was also a heterosexual. In every major sexual scandal the evangelical church has seen, the sinning has included good, clean, baby-making hetero sex, even if it also involves adultery and prostitution. Not homosexuality. Not, as Dobson says “the promotion of perversion.” In news conferences and at the pulpit yesterday, New Life Churchs board of overseers did not make a single mention of Haggard’s cheating on his wife and paying for sex. Haggards “sexual immorality,” his homosexuality, so overwhelms his other sexual transgressions — such pedestrian boys-will-be-boys mistakes — that it is the only thing for which he is being “treated.” Dobson and his team will conduct an investigation of the former pastors “mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical life” as well as his computer and hard drive to plumb the homosexual depths of his mind. Evil is evil, and must be cast out of both the man and the kingdom.

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On Tuesday, Ted Haggard’s friend and sometime attorney Doug Lamborn will run for Congress as a Republican from the district that includes Colorado Springs and New Life Church. It might well have been Haggard himself running for the seat. He had publicly flirted with the notion.

Yet Haggard was probably more powerful behind the scenes than any mere congressman. Haggard was instrumental in founding the Arlington Group, a conservative group in Washington that lobbies against gay marriage, and he was a regular voice on President Bushs Monday morning conference calls.

The combination of Haggard’s political ties and personal combustion will likely not affect turnout locally or nationally, according to Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “People are not shocked anymore by hypocrisy.” Nor does Sabato see the religious right shrinking from the American political field. “Religion is a constant theme in American life. It’s always been a part of our politics. It always will be part of our politics.”

Randall Balmer, author of “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical’s Lament,” disagrees. He sees the Haggard scandal spinning out into larger disaffection with the religion right, even, perhaps as soon as Tuesday, when he suspects that many disgruntled rank-and-file evangelicals will sit out this election. Balmer says that the disaffection stems from the cult of personality that often drives evangelicalism. “A congregation like New Life galvanizes around a charismatic individual, and their whole understanding of faith is filtered through the oracle of the preacher,” he says. “When something happens with him, then their confidence is shaken.”

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, thinks the Haggard scandal has the potential to be a watershed in the evangelical community in the long run. “The religious right has got to think more about focusing on its internal family and less on regulation of everyone elses life and family through the political system,” he says. “This event tends to focus your attention more on personal piety than political opportunism. I think over the next few years that is going to be a major debate within the evangelical community.”

Meanwhile, Haggard’s flock will decide Tuesday whether to show up at the polls, and whether to treat the voting booth as a civic prayer closet. Its hard for anyone here to imagine a last-minute change of heart about the gay-marriage ban. Local evangelicals will likely follow the example of their disgraced pastor — a man who struggled to be everything he is not, a leader rejected like King Saul — who announced proudly from the pulpit recently that he votes “a straight ticket.”