Earley Breaks the Mold
BARNES, FRED
Earley Breaks the Mold by Fred Barnes For 10 years as a Virginia state senator, Mark Earley rose on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion to talk about the lives of...
...Certainly they were for Earley in the GOP primary against three opponents, two of whom aired TV ads...
...Reed, who recently stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, is a close friend...
...Not surprisingly, Bill Dolan, Earley's Democratic foe, spent the entire campaign pillorying him as a Christian Right extremist...
...The Washington Post and Washington Times, one liberal, the other conservative, endorsed Ear-ley on the same day...
...Ralph Reed, now a political consultant in Atlanta, says the conventional wisdom is wrong about candidates who publicly express their faith in God and associate with religious-conservative leaders...
...Couple that with "smart campaign tactics, and we will win more than our fair share of elections...
...In the campaign, he cast himself as a mainstream conservative, not a Christian Right candidate...
...Robertson donated $35,000...
...Earley later withdrew his name from the bill...
...But his labor ties had a downside: opposition by the National Right-to-Work Committee...
...Reed says he did two things right...
...Since his law firm represented labor unions, Earley got to know labor leaders, and in his first state senate race he was supported by the state AFL-CIO...
...Earley made an effort to get along with the press and important Virginia commentators like Larry Sabato, and it paid dividends...
...Already, Earley is the model for conservative Christian candidates around the country...
...Thus, he didn't encounter the hostility from the press that earlier Christian conservative candidates, Mike Farris in 1993 and Oliver North in 1994, had faced...
...Au contraire, the Post wrote...
...Later, in its endorsement, the paper said his legislative record and "the support he enjoys among minorities, labor, teacher organizations and other groups" show he's no extremist...
...Earley's biography turned out to be a big asset...
...First, he ran as a Reagan-style conservative...
...After college, he spent two years in the Philippines as a Christian missionary for a group called Navigators...
...The result: He was seen as a legitimate political player, far from one-dimensional...
...The school, by the way, was later attended by Alonzo Mourning, who became a basketball star with the Miami Heat...
...He also joined the NAACP in 1982 and was endorsed for attorney general by Virginia NAACP president Paul Gillis...
...No colleagues joined him...
...This was partly due to Ear-ley's co-sponsorship of a bill that would have eroded the state's right-to-work law...
...Yet Earley won...
...Though clearly a religious conservative, Earley was active in the state senate mostly on issues like welfare reform and juvenile justice, sponsoring bills on those subjects that became law...
...He now says "no one should be compelled to join a union or pay union dues...
...How did he do it, becoming "the first bona fide member of the Christian conservative movement to achieve major state office," as the Norfolk VirginianPilot put it...
...Earley, 43, is a soft-spoken, non-threatening, likable ex-missionary, but personality alone can't explain a landslide...
...For all his non-Christian ties, Earley wouldn't have won without a political base in theologically conservative churches in Virginia...
...No Republican has ever done better running for state office in Virginia...
...He won with 36 percent...
...In fact, the Post editorial page rushed to Earley's defense when Democrats first attacked him in June as "the hand-picked candidate of the narrow right wing of the Republican party...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Earley has two well-known constituents in his district around the city of Chesapeake: Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson...
...I took an active role in what wasn't then but now is known as racial reconciliation," Earley says...
...Earley broke the mold, Rodgers says, by coming across as a man of "principled compassion, not snarling condemnation...
...Second, "he demonstrates that if you want to run statewide as a religious conservative candidate, you need to rack up an impressive record in another job...
...This makes it very difficult for foes and the press to typecast the candidate as, in Reed's terminology, "uni-dimensional...
...Kincaid, Ear-ley's chief consultant, is obsessive about the need for conservatives "to treat the media as your friend...
...He was a senior at Indian River High in Chesapeake when a nearby all-black school closed and its students came to Indian River...
...Earley relied on public appearances and direct mail to mobilize Christians (and others...
...This year, the firefighters union endorsed him...
...Actually, Earley had courted reporters for years...
...Guy Rodgers, the consultant, says Earley's style helped him avoid being pigeonholed...
...Earley Breaks the Mold by Fred Barnes For 10 years as a Virginia state senator, Mark Earley rose on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion to talk about the lives of unborn children...
...And when Earley ran for attorney general of Virginia this year, he hired two veterans of Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, Anne Kincaid and Guy Rodgers, as campaign advisers...
...And not just in Virginia...
...And the issues he touted were related to the attorney general's job— public safety, parole, school-based anti-crime programs...
...He also developed ties to blacks and organized labor, as well as to the business community and GOP moderates like senator John Warner and congressman Tom Davis...
...Several years ago, he spoke at a church-sponsored event called "Field of Blood," which honored the unborn by planting small crosses...
...It is that stereotype that so often prevents us from communicating our message effectively...
...I believe too many people in the pro-family movement, by their temperament, words, and actions, reinforce the liberal, flawed stereotype of us as snarling, uncompassionate dogmatists," he says...
...His record and his campaign do...
...This was credible because he hadn't jumped into the race fresh from a church pew...
...In fact, he led the Republican ticket, with 58 percent of the vote...
...That's a job outside the ministry, of course...
...As a prominent lawyer in Norfolk, Earley served as honorary chairman of the Virginia Chapter of the United Negro College Fund...
...He never tried to shrink from his views and values, but he didn't run a campaign of which abortion was the centerpiece," says Reed...
...Their religious connections are "an asset at the polling place, not an albatross...
...If politicians handle reporters with respect, she insists, "they'll respect you...
...During the campaign, he got strong backing from Filipino immigrants in Virginia...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 11
