Bauer to the people

A small man trying to become the Christian right's biggest player hits the trail with his vision of America

Politics by Ben Geman

By 10 A.M., it's hot -- sticky, nasty, get-to-the-movies hot -- on the blacktop in front of the Wilkins Elementary School in Amherst, New Hampshire, population about 12,000 and, for a few hours on Sunday, ground zero in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

On July 4, Amherst is not just a small New England city, but a place where would-be Republican presidents make their cases to voters in the state that has the first-in-the-nation primary. Front-runner and Texas governor George W. Bush will be on hand today, as will Elizabeth Dole and a few lesser candidates in a field that includes such long shots as former vice-president Dan Quayle, former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, and New Hampshire senator Bob Smith. The cars and vans parked outside have out-of-state plates and plenty of stickers. An aide to Dole is blowing up yellow DOLE 2000 balloons and tying them to a makeshift weight made of two-liter Pepsi bottles. Meanwhile, a lone aide to creepy zillionaire Steve Forbes stands off to the side, holding a sign that reads FORBES: HE WANTS YOU TO WIN. A few Quayle staffers chat with him as they wait for the parade to start.

Despite the heat, one group of staff and volunteers seems to have an incredible amount of energy. They run across the schoolyard to place signs, anticipating the arrival of their leader. This is the army of Gary Bauer, a cadre of young, almost exclusively white enthusiasts prone to spontaneous pep rallies. Of all the aides, they are the best boosters by far, launching from time to time into a chant of "Who's got the power? Gary Bauer!"

Gary Bauer is the former head of powerhouse religious-right group the Family Research Council (FRC), an offshoot of the Reverend James Dobson's Focus on the Family, the nation's most powerful Christian conservative group. And Bauer, once domestic-policy adviser to former president Ronald Reagan, is one of the religious right's most powerful figures. Now he hopes to go from the FRC, which he left to run for president, to the White House.

---

Bauer is running, he will tell you, because America has lost track of where it needs to go, which to him is down a street where only judges who will torpedo Roe v. Wade will be appointed, where children will pray in classrooms, and where gays will never marry each other. He's no one-trick pony -- he advocates for a flat tax and against most-favored-nation status for China, among other issues -- but cultural battles are what matter most to him.

Of course, Bauer's odds of reaching the Oval Office are slim -- he's hovering in the low single digits in most polls. But Bauer and his staff say he can pull off an upset. Matt Smith, Bauer's deputy communications director, says the race will whittle down to Bush and one of the hard-right Republicans, and then watch out, George W.

"We are confident a conservative Republican will emerge, and it will be Gary Bauer with his pro-life and pro-family message," says Smith when asked if Bauer has a chance at all.

Other campaigners also insist there's an opening -- Bush's nearly $40 million war chest notwithstanding -- and, of course, each hopes his or her candidate will be the one to emerge as the Bush-slayer. "Any candidate is vulnerable," said Kelleigh Domaingue, Quayle's New Hampshire scheduling coordinator, as she marched through the awful heat of another parade that same day, this one in nearby Merrimack. "You want to peak on election day, not now."

For Bauer, though, more is at stake than his own success. His candidacy comes at a watershed time for the Christian right. Paul Weyrich and other leaders of the movement recently decided that it was time to backpedal from politics; they make a strong case that their message isn't getting through, that waging the culture war through the ballot box is not the best way to advance their values. Right now, it's the moderate Republicans, like Bush, who are considered most electable, and the party's establishment is not being as friendly to the religious right as conservatives might like.

But Bauer rejects this retreat. "I would argue that Bauer represents an attempt to carry forward the culture war with the knowledge that there will still be battles lost," says Chip Berlet, senior analyst with Somerville-based Political Research Associates, which monitors right-wing movements. "He'd like to win, but I don't think he expects to. But on the other hand, someone has to hold the flame to the feet of the Republican Party."

And Bauer has a lot to gain here, even if he doesn't win the nomination. When Quayle, Buchanan, Forbes, Smith, and the rest of the hard right are vanquished by George W. Bush or someone else more palatable to the general electorate, as is almost certain, they will vanish into the ether until it's time to do all this again. But Bauer's different: he is positioning himself to become an even stronger force in the Christian right. For example, he's created a PAC called the Campaign for Working Families that is separate from the Family Research Council but is working to extend the FRC's "pro-family" message into electoral politics. For anyone concerned about increasing the rights of gays and lesbians, maintaining access to abortion, and keeping a divide between church and state, his candidacy has negative repercussions well beyond this election.

Indeed, even a failed presidential campaign would help establish mailing lists, a volunteer base, and other tools helpful for operating at a lower level. If Bauer wants to establish himself and energize Christian conservatives, this is the time. "He already has a base with the Family Research Council and his close connection to Focus on the Family," says Elliot Mincberg, vice-president of People for the American Way, a Washington, DC-based civil-liberties group that monitors the religious right. "But this gives him an enormous [opportunity] to build on that base and build his name recognition and clout within the religious-right movement."

---

Bauer's campaign releases announce "media availability" times here and there throughout his New Hampshire trip. But that implies long stretches of media unavailability, of which, for Bauer, there seems to be no such thing. It's a stark contrast to the Bush campaign: at the Merrimack and Amherst parades, Bush was surrounded by hordes of protective handlers and photographers. But anyone who wanted to talk to Bauer could just walk right up and do so. There he stood, in front of the elementary school on a patch of grass, next to the convertible where his family would ride alongside him as he greeted voters.

For someone who aims to be a general in the culture war, Bauer is rather unassuming. Standing about 5'6", he's a plain-looking man with small features and a low-key speaking style free of flourish; it's as if he's so confident he's right that he won't insult your intelligence with rhetorical flash or booming exclamation points. "At the end of the day, ideas matter," he firmly tells the reporters querying him about Bush's commanding lead and huge war chest.

Recent weeks have provided Bauer with ammunition to use against Bush -- he's zeroed in on one of Bush's recent statements about abortion that true conservatives find disgustingly rubbery. George W. recently declared that he is pro-life, but he will not make that a litmus test when appointing federal judges. "There are litmus tests all the time," Bauer says. "No president would put a bigot on the court who would make decisions based on race. That's important, and so are one and a half million unborn children."

Of course, Bush is hardly the second coming of Fidel Castro. The New Republic's Dana Milbank recently pointed out that Bush has made "troubling nods to the right" on taxes, the privatization of social-security revenues, and military spending. Or take a look at the mock baseball cards he was handing out: they boast that, as Texas governor, Bush "rewrote the juvenile justice code to save a generation of young people by insisting on punishment."

But in Bauer's view, Bush is on the wrong side in the culture war: not anti-abortion enough, and unwilling to point the finger at what Bauer calls the "pollution" of sexual and violent films. "He's signaled that he is soft on sanctity-of-life issues, and he bailed out on Hollywood issues earlier this week when he raised a couple of million dollars out there," Bauer said of Bush on Sunday.

To Bauer, America is under siege: from Hollywood, from taxes, from anyone who would weaken the family. "People with my values have been on the defensive," Bauer said Sunday. "We are not looking for fights, but traditional voters are responding to an agenda being pushed by the other side, the gay-rights movement and so forth."

---

Bauer has a lot of energy as he stumps, and so does his staff. They are believers. "Domestically, he's very strong, and I like the fact that he is pro-life," says one college student working for Bauer this summer. "He's very much for a strong America."

"I think a lot of people want to set up Gary as someone who wants to oppress gays and lesbians, but he doesn't. He opposes their agenda, not them themselves, and there is a big difference there," adds Joey Endelberg, another intern traveling with the campaign in New Hampshire and wearing, like the rest of the well-disciplined crew, a shiny white BAUER 2000 T-shirt. "He believes two guys and two girls is completely different than what he and his wife have. And I think he stands with America on that one."

As Bauer makes his way down the roughly 1.5-mile parade route in Amherst, he darts back and forth, chatting with onlookers as his throng of young supporters chants, "Who's got the power? Gary Bauer!" Bauer exchanges quick jokes and moves in diagonal lines in order to greet as many people as possible without causing the parade to lose its cadence. "You're conflicted," he teases one woman who has stickers from several candidates. At the later parade in Merrimack, he's equally jaunty, even though it's now hotter and, for a decent stretch, the going is uphill. "I was six-three when we started," he jokes.

At one point in Amherst, a man from the crowd, a computer consultant who's backing him, wishes Bauer luck. They shake hands, and, for a second, Bauer slows down and looks more serious. "Thank you," he says, and, breaking the handshake, he stretches out his arm to give a thumbs-up sign. The computer consultant turns his thumb skyward, too. They regard one another for a moment. Bauer has found another ally to help him in this race -- and perhaps afterward, when there's much more work to be done.

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.