Ballot Boxing: Trump tries to woo evangelicals

As Donald Trump worked to woo several hundred Christian leaders at a gathering in New York City on Tuesday, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee promised to pick pro-life Supreme Court justices. He also rang the bell of religious liberty for evangelicals worried about eroding freedoms.

The mixed results: Trump seemed to hit the right notes for some evangelicals, but for others he remained like a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

Indeed, a handful of religious leaders dissatisfied with Trump met Tuesday evening to discuss a potential third-party bid—a possibility that seems like a long shot less than five months before Election Day but still holds appeal for at least some conservative activists.

Trump’s invitation-only event in Manhattan earlier in the day drew several hundred evangelicals, Catholics, and social conservatives to the sixth floor of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Billed as “A Conversation about America’s Future with Donald Trump and Ben Carson,” event organizers included the advocacy group My Faith Votes—an organization led in part by Johnnie Moore, a former advisor to Carson’s presidential campaign.

Other organizers included Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, and former Focus on the Family president James Dobson. (Organizers said their participation didn’t equal an endorsement of the candidate.)

At the end of the event, Trump’s campaign announced an evangelical advisory board that includes Dobson, Richard Land of Southern Evangelical Seminary, and former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. It also includes prosperity-gospel preachers to whom Trump has long appealed: Kenneth Copeland, Paula White, and Mark Burns.

In his appeal to the crowd, Trump said “the No. 1 question” was religious liberty—an issue he’s rarely mentioned in past campaign events, other than promising to restore the practice of store clerks saying “Merry Christmas” to customers.

But on Tuesday, Trump promised he’d work on “freeing up your religion, freeing up your thoughts. You talk about religious liberty and religious freedom—you don’t have any religious freedom if you think about it.”

When Kelly Shackelford of the conservative legal organization First Liberty asked Trump what he thought about court cases involving the conflict between religious freedom and participation in same-sex weddings, Trump offered few specifics: “If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide, and if it’s [Hillary Clinton’s] judges, you also know how they’re gonna decide.”

Trump later appealed to Christians’ potential voting power, saying things were different “when I used to go to church. … You’re the most powerful group in the country, but you have to band together.”

He made a similar appeal to a smaller group of Christian leaders gathered for a private meeting with the candidate. In a series of video tweets posted by African-American pastor E.W. Jackson, Trump said he owed “so much” to Christianity, including a nice life and good children, and also “because the evangelical vote was mostly gotten by me.”

Trump said it was fine to pray for political leaders, but “what you really have to do is you have to pray for everyone to get out and vote for one specific person.”

While some evangelicals and social conservatives have warmed to the idea of voting for Trump after his promises of pro-life Supreme Court justices, it’s still unclear whether those leaders will launch get-out-the-vote efforts or actively promote the candidate.

Back at the main event, National Public Radio reported that Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse addressed Trump’s character issues, including his foul language and his public boasting about sexual promiscuity.

Graham pointed out that the Bible is full of flawed leaders, including Moses, King David, and the Apostle Peter. The NPR report didn’t mention whether Graham also pointed out those leaders grieved and repented of their sins. Trump has said he hasn’t asked God for forgiveness.

Other conservatives wouldn’t attend the meeting. Robert George, a conservative Catholic and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, declined the invitation, saying he feared Trump would “bring disgrace upon those individuals and organizations who publicly embrace him.” He added the election is “presenting a horrible choice. May God help us.”

Meanwhile, Eric Teetsel, the former religious outreach adviser for Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential bid, stood in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel ahead of the Trump meeting, holding a handmade sign: “Torture is not pro-life. Racism is not pro-life. Misogyny is not pro-life …”

Teetsel’s quiet protest came hours before a group of about a dozen religious leaders met for a private dinner with the group Better for America—an organization working on a potential third-party bid.

Founded by Mitt Romney bundler John Kingston, the group wanted to offer a rival event with religious leaders. The organization is working to search for candidates and get on ballots as state deadlines near. Deadlines have passed in Texas and North Carolina, but the group has said that it could potentially find a legal path forward.

Other third-party possibilities have floundered in recent days, but in one of the most unpredictable election seasons in modern history, it’s worth staying tuned.