Into the fray

WASHINGTON, D.C.-For 25 years the Family Research Council has "carefully avoided" endorsing candidates, said FRC President Tony Perkins.

Perkins made up for lost time Friday by announcing at a press conference the creation of the FRC Action Political Action Committee, where he released a list of 80 endorsements- all but two of them Republicans. He also announced that the FRC Action PAC hoped to contribute $250,000 to some of these candidates.

"A quarter-of-a-million dollars is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things," Perkins said. "But our endorsements and our contributions send a signal to people with whom we've developed a relationship that these candidates are worthy of their support, too."

Perkins said the goal of the endorsements and the financial contributions is simple: "to increase the percentage of pro-family candidates in public office and to advance pro-family issues." Perkins said most of the contributions in the 2008 election cycle would be to incumbents with proven track records on pro-family issues, but that in the future the PAC would support promising newcomers.

"Eventually, we hope to grow the PAC to train, recruit, and equip pro-family candidates," Perkins said.

Why, after 25 years, did Perkins and the FRC choose to start a PAC now? "We have been thinking about this for years," he said. "But we wanted to be strategic and deliberative about it. This year we were able to think through the process and what we wanted to accomplish. The Family Research Council has developed a strong reputation, credibility, on pro-family issues, and we didn't want to squander that credibility. Neither did we want to be a poor steward of that credibility by failing to put it to work."

Perkins added, "Politics is a dirty business and Christians often avoid it. By registration, Christians are becoming more independent. Some folks in the political process have confused what it means to be a values voter. They've asked, 'What do values issues mean?' We hope to help cut through some of the clutter."

The FRC Action PAC will not be endorsing a presidential candidate because, Perkins said, "We're not a huge PAC yet. To have an impact on the presidential race would take more money that we could get together."