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Back in the Saddle Well, I’m back. My career as an active political candidate reached its zenith on November 7, when 45,000 Massachusetts voters did me the honor of choosing me to represent them in the US Senate.
However, 2.5 million other voters chose someone else. In fact 1.9 million opted to give the incumbent, Sen. Ted Kennedy, another 6-year term, thus ensuring that I would resume my editorial post at CWR.
The campaign was sometimes exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, and always fascinating. I am grateful to the people who made it possible: to my publisher, Father Fessio, who indulged my penchant for tilting at windmills by authorizing a leave of absence; to my colleague, Domenico Bettinelli, who handled the editorial duties in my absence; to the hundreds of donors and volunteers who supported the campaign.
The truth is that I never expected to win the race. My campaign—which I waged without the support of a major political party—was motivated not by a desire to hold public office but by an urge to change public opinion. Still I did hope to muster more than 2 percent of the popular vote. So as I look over the official results, I cannot avoid asking myself what went wrong.
A chastened political candidate analyzes his defeat.
The Catholic vote
Roughly one-half of all Massachusetts voters describe themselves as Catholics. I ran on a strong pro-life platform, which in theory should have appealed to Catholic voters. But the Catholic voters rejected my message.
According to exit polls, 76 percent of the voters who described themselves as Catholics voted for Sen. Kennedy, whose outspoken support for the killing of unborn children had recently earned him the “Champion of Choice” award—the highest honor conferred by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Another 12 percent of the self-described voters voted for a Libertarian candidate, who also supported unrestricted legal abortion on demand. Still another 9 percent chose the Republican challenger, who opposed partial-birth abortion but supported the general legal framework of Roe v. Wade. And a paltry 3 percent of the Catholic voters cast their ballots for the only pro-life candidate in the race.
How could this happen? Any conventional political analyst would say that my campaign foundered because it lacked two essential ingredients: funding and publicity. That analysis is accurate but inconclusive.
Certainly it is true that I ran my campaign on a shoestring. My budget was $75,000, while Sen. Kennedy had over $6 million at his disposal. (Even the Libertarian candidate received over $800,000.) But I certainly tried to raise the sort of financial support that would have allowed a high-profile campaign. Why didn’t more pro-lifers contribute to my campaign?
Perhaps I am not an effective fundraiser; I concede that possibility. But it is not so easy to explain the lack of media coverage for my campaign. I am, after all, a full-time professional journalist. I know how to write a press release that will catch an editor’s eye. Day after day I churned out provocative statements and faxed them off to local editors. But I might as well have been putting those press releases into a paper shredder instead of a fax machine. Not once in the course of the campaign did a major newspaper or broadcast outlet take note of my policy positions; not once was a story devoted to my candidacy.
Not paying attention
So the question arises again: Why did reporters and editors feel that they could safely ignore my candidacy? One columnist, writing with more candor than delicacy, described my political appeal as “exotic.” Is a pro-life stance really an “exotic” political posture in a state in which half of the voters are Catholic? Evidently it is.
The exit polls offer a few more significant insights on my race. Among the voters who describe themselves as “conservative,” 6 percent supported me. That number is certainly not overwhelming, but it is twice as strong as the “Catholic” response. Among self-identified Republican voters, and those who cast a ballot for George W. Bush, I won 5 percent of the votes. If these poll results are accurate—and I have no reason to doubt them—I was more successful at winning the support of conservatives and Republicans than that of Catholics.
But I did not court “conservative” or “Republican” support. Instead I spent my evenings addressing one local pro-life group after another. I never issued a public statement that did not allude to the abortion issue; I sought no public endorsement except that of the state’s largest pro-life organization. And yet when the dust settled and the returns came in, I won just 3 percent of the Catholic vote.
My Senate campaign was not an isolated event. All across the United States, most self-identified “Catholic” voters cast their ballots for a presidential candidate who supports the legalized slaughter of the unborn.
Are most American Catholics actively opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity of human life, are they indifferent, or are they simply not paying attention? In any case, the Catholic Church has failed to sway the political opinions of her own faithful. My excursion into secular politics leaves me more convinced than ever that we cannot expect reform in society at large until we achieve reform within our Church.
—Philip F. Lawler
Back to Catholic World Report December 2000 Table of Contents