MASON CITY, Iowa — Four years ago, 57 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelical Christians. Rick Santorum won evangelicals (with 32 percent of their vote), but the second-place finisher was … Ron Paul, with 18 percent, according to entrance polls from 2012. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, neither evangelical rock stars, each took home 14 percent.
The point is, the evangelical vote is not monolithic. And this weekend, within the span of a day, the two leading candidates in the Republican presidential race here in Iowa, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump — virtually neck and neck in the polls — spoke a short distance from each other and showed wildly different approaches to winning Iowa and its evangelicals.
Cruz’s campaign appeal was suffused with references to God and Jesus and faith. Trump’s not so much — not even at all.
Start with the locations. On Friday, Cruz chose the Praise Community Church in Mason City as the site of his largest town hall. For his Saturday rally, Trump chose the Surf Ballroom, less than 10 miles away in Clear Lake, famous as the site of Buddy Holly’s last concert before his death in a plane crash in 1959.
Cruz likes to ask attendees at his events to do three things for him. The first is to commit to caucus for him on Feb. 1. The second is to volunteer for the campaign. And the third is to pray.
“Every day between now and February 1, I would like to ask each of you to commit to pray at least just one minute — one minute,” Cruz told the crowd at Praise Community. “When you wake up in the morning, when you’re shaving, when you sit down for lunch, when you’re putting your kids down for bed, when you’re lying down to go to sleep — one minute lifting up our country in prayer: Father God, please keep this awakening [unintelligible], keep this revival going. Awaken the body of Christ that we might rise up to pull this country back from the abyss.”
“Awaken the body of Christ” — that’s about as overt a religious appeal as one will hear from a candidate’s mouth. But Cruz, whose minister father Rafael has wowed evangelical groups in Iowa and beyond, had more.
“We’re here today, standing on the promises of 2 Chronicles 7:14,” Cruz continued, reciting the passage by heart: “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
To say the verse resonated would be an understatement; in some parts of the audience, supporters spoke the words along with Cruz. And when Cruz finished, they all rose in the longest standing ovation of the day. (Also, Cruz got extra points for throwing in a phrase like “standing on the promises,” referencing the old hymn without actually citing it.)
If anything, some on Cruz’s team are more overtly religious than the candidate. Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who, along with Rep. Steve King was a regular on Cruz’s six-day, 28-county tour of Iowa, delivered a virtual sermon at the Praise Community Church.
“In 1979, Ronald Reagan said, ‘I believe this country hungers and thirsts for a spiritual revival,'” Vander Plaats told the crowd. “It is so fitting that we are in a church today … because revival begins in the house of the Lord. And in 2016 I believe, more than in 1979, this country hungers and thirsts for a spiritual revival.”
Biblical references flew — Genesis 12:3, Deuteronomy 6 — and Vander Plaats exhorted the crowd to “stand in the gap” — from Ezekiel — for life, for marriage, for religious liberty, for Israel. “Ted Cruz, I believe, God has placed for such a time as this,” Vander Plaats said.
The next day, at the Surf Ballroom, the Trump rally could not have been more different when it came to the topic of open expression of religious feeling. There wasn’t any.
It was the standard Trump performance — an hour of bombing the s–t out of the Islamic State, of stopping illegal immigration, of defeating China in trade, of not trusting politicians, of lots and lots of polls, and more. And Trump filled the 2,000-capacity room. (Cruz filled the church, too, but the crowd was about 300.)
In the past, Trump tried clumsily to present his religious credentials to Iowa voters. He’s a Presbyterian, he said, and the Bible is his favorite book (far ahead of his second-favorite, his own Art of the Deal). Last September, Trump even brought his personal Bible, complete with his mother’s handwriting, to an event in Ames. Now, he doesn’t do that.
Is any of that important? Ask people in the Trump camp about the absence of religion in Trump’s public speeches in such a religious state, and there will be two answers. The first: Evangelicals want jobs, too. They want to secure the border. They want to get rid of the Islamic State, especially after Paris and San Bernardino. All of that means a lot more to evangelical voters than a candidate who can quote 2 Chronicles 7:14.
In addition, they say, evangelical voters are tired of voting for candidates who appeal to their faith and then don’t have the strength to win the Republican nomination or the White House. Better a strong candidate who addresses many of their concerns than a weaker one who addresses them all.
Jamie Johnson, a longtime Iowa Republican operative who supported Santorum the last time around and has also served on the GOP’s state central committee, came to the Trump Clear Lake rally. (After signing on with Rick Perry early in the race, Johnson has not been affiliated with any other candidate.) “This last week, I was with 15 self-identified, born-again evangelical Christians, two of whom are in ministry full time,” Johnson told me before the rally. “They’re voting for Trump. I said why? They said Islamic terrorism, they want to seal the border, and Trump says the things that we’ve been wanting to say for a long time. Those are the three things that people keep saying.”
At the moment, Cruz leads Trump in Iowa by a slim margin — 27 percent to 23 percent in a new Fox News poll. According to a breakdown of that poll’s results, Cruz leads among white Iowa evangelicals by 33 percent to 19 percent. If it holds, perhaps that lead could make the difference for Cruz, although remember that a total of 46 percent of evangelicals voted for non-favorites Paul, Gingrich, and Romney in 2012.
Cruz and Trump appear headed for a tight, within-the-margin showdown, powered in part by their appeals to the markedly different voting instincts of Iowa’s evangelical Christians. There’s no one evangelical vote, and for either man, the most religious of Iowa GOP voters could make the difference.
