Faith-Based Voters for Trump Won't Be in 'Stained Glass Ghetto'

Ralph Reed, the leader of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told thousands of faith-motivated voters Friday at the FFC “Road to Majority” conference held in Washington, DC that evangelical Christians and Mass-attending Catholics are the voting bloc that makes Donald J. Trump president.

The Georgian said he rejects any suggestion that in the 2016 election conservative Christian and Catholic voters retreat into the “stained glass ghetto.”

Reed introduced the GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump as “a man, who has become a friend” as his third appearance to the annual Road to Majority forum. “Trump won the nomination with the votes of men and women of faith.”

As he listed the New York City developer’s accomplishments, Reed said that Trump’s TV show The Apprentice was so successful that Trump is trying to take the program’s catch-phrase: “You’re fired” and make it a trademark.

“It is a phrase that we hope he uses a lot in Washington beginning in January of 2017,” he said.

“We are not looking for a politician-messiah, we already have a messiah,” he said. “We understand that perfection is not the measure that should be applied. In all of recorded history, there has only been one perfect person, who walked on the earth and he wasn’t a candidate, and he wasn’t a political figure, his name was Jesus Christ.”

Half of the more than 10 million more voters participating in the 2016 GOP primaries, compared to the 2012 primaries, self-identified as born-again Christians, he said. “They alone overwhelm Obama’s 2012 margin of victory.”

Reed said the media downplays the heft of the faith-based voters, when a study of the 2014 turnout showed they are 32 percent of the total, 23 percent self-identified in as conservative Christians and 10 percent as Mass-attending Catholics.

“My friends, that is bigger than the union vote, the African-American vote, the Hispanic vote, the feminist vote and the gay vote put together,” he said.

In 2012, FFC estimated that 17 million conservative faith-based voters did not vote, he said. “We estimated that nine million were not registered and that eight million were registered, but just did not vote, we are not going to let that happen in 2016.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition plans to focus on nine states where they will have the biggest impact: Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, he said.

In these states, Reed said his organization intends to knock on one million doors, distribute 35 million voter information guides, make 15 million phone calls and send 20 million emails and text messages, including messages alerting the faith-based voters on the day early voting begins in their state.

“If they have not voted by 4 p.m., we’re gonna go to their house in a car, or on a bike or in a van and we’re gonna get them to the polls,” he said.

“We dare not sit on the sidelines on what I believe is the most important election of our lifetime,” Reed, who was once the executive director of the Christian Coalition. “That is not an option for a follower of Christ.”