{"id":250,"date":"2008-01-14T11:50:52","date_gmt":"2008-01-14T11:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html"},"modified":"2008-01-14T11:50:52","modified_gmt":"2008-01-14T11:50:52","slug":"romneys-big-michigan-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html","title":{"rendered":"Romney’s Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"romney9.jpg\"Mitt Romney announced a big Michigan Christian Right endorsement today: Marlene Elwell<\/a>. Not exactly a household name, Elwell was a key advisor to the 1990s-era Christian Coalition and helped engineer Pat Robertson\u2019s strong finish in 1988\u2019s Iowa presidential caucuses.
\nMore recently, Elwell directed the Americans of Faith coalition for John McCain\u2019s presidential campaign. She left the campaign last spring<\/a> after saying McCain\u2019s top staffers\u2014though not McCain himself\u2014treated her and fellow religious activists like \u201cthey had contempt for the faith-based community\u2026 The way we were being treated it was as if we had leprosy.”
\nA conservative Catholic who led a successful 2004 campaign to ban gay unions in Michigan by amending the state\u2019s Constitution, Elwell told God-o-Meter in a phone interview that she has devoted much of the last two months to trying to derail Mike Huckabee\u2019s campaign. Though she says the Huckabee camp repeatedly tried to sign her during 2007, Elwell calls the former Arkansas governor a liberal on non-hot button social issues like education.
\nElwell has a strong network of conservative Christian activists in Michigan, but she says she\u2019s limiting her efforts to promote Romney and stop Huckabee to the state\u2019s Catholic community. She spent a month in Iowa before the state\u2019s first in the nation caucuses and concluded that evangelicals couldn\u2019t be dissuaded from supporting Huckabee. \u201cThe evangelical community in Iowa was not wanting to listen\u2014Huckabee was one of them and they were going to vote for him,\u201d Elwell says. \u201cSo I concentrated my effort on Catholics.\u201d
\nEntrance polls from the Iowa caucuses did not gauge the candidates\u2019 Catholic support, but New Hampshire entrance polls show that Huckabee got 7-percent Catholic support from Republican voters, compared to 38-percent each for Romney and McCain.
\nElwell says she decided to back Romney on Saturday, after receiving mail trumpeting McCain\u2019s pro-life record. She doesn\u2019t consider McCain to be fully pro-life because he supports embryonic stem cell research. The mailing included the insignia of the Pro-Life Federation of Michigan<\/a>, which Elwell calls a shell group that lacks legitimacy. \u201cMcCain\u2019s supposed to be a straight talker,\u201d Elwell says. \u201cAnd this is not straight talk.\u201d
\nThe Pro-Life Federation of Michigan\u2019s web site does not include a contact number, but God-o-Meter has sent an email to the group and will report back if it learns more.<\/p>\n


\n9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitt Romney announced a big Michigan Christian Right endorsement today: Marlene Elwell. Not exactly a household name, Elwell was a key advisor to the 1990s-era Christian Coalition and helped engineer Pat Robertson\u2019s strong finish in 1988\u2019s Iowa presidential caucuses. More recently, Elwell directed the Americans of Faith coalition for John McCain\u2019s presidential campaign. She left…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitt-romney"],"yoast_head":"\nRomney's Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Romney's Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mitt Romney announced a big Michigan Christian Right endorsement today: Marlene Elwell. Not exactly a household name, Elwell was a key advisor to the 1990s-era Christian Coalition and helped engineer Pat Robertson\u2019s strong finish in 1988\u2019s Iowa presidential caucuses. More recently, Elwell directed the Americans of Faith coalition for John McCain\u2019s presidential campaign. She left…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-14T11:50:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney9.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Romney's Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Romney's Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement - God-O-Meter","og_description":"Mitt Romney announced a big Michigan Christian Right endorsement today: Marlene Elwell. Not exactly a household name, Elwell was a key advisor to the 1990s-era Christian Coalition and helped engineer Pat Robertson\u2019s strong finish in 1988\u2019s Iowa presidential caucuses. More recently, Elwell directed the Americans of Faith coalition for John McCain\u2019s presidential campaign. She left…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-01-14T11:50:52+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney9.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html","name":"Romney's Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney9.jpg","datePublished":"2008-01-14T11:50:52+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-14T11:50:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney9.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romney9.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/romneys-big-michigan-christian.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Romney’s Big Michigan Christian Right Endorsement"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}