Voters gave the Republican Party a majority in the U.S. Senate in the Nov. 4 mid-term election, but the response was mixed on several state initiatives backed by social conservatives.
Tennessee approved an amendment that will give more power to state lawmakers to regulate and restrict abortion, adding language to the Tennessee constitution that reads in part: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” even in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.
Tennessee Baptist Convention Executive Director Randy Davis expressed gratefulness for voters’ support of Amendment 1, which allows the legislature to regulate abortion in the state. The amendment won with 52.6 percent of the vote in a race that was considered a toss-up when the polls opened.
“I think Tennessee has begun the process of no longer being the destination for abortions in the Southeast,” Davis said. “I’m very thankful that Tennesseans stood up for life. They showed up to vote and I’m very proud of our laymen and pastors that became engaged in the political process over this issue.”
Voters in Colorado and North Dakota, however, defeated pro-life amendments. In Colorado voters rejected a proposal to add “unborn human beings” to the state’s criminal code, a measure that some feared could ban abortion.
In North Dakota voters rejected a “right-to-life” state constitutional amendment that abortion rights advocates feared would have ended legal abortions there. The North Dakota measure would have declared “the inalienable right to life of every human being at every stage of development must be recognized and protected.”
Still Southern Baptists in Colorado view the election of pro-life U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner as a victory for unborn children and North Dakotans will continue to proclaim the value of life from conception, leaders said.
Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said the election illustrates “the pro-life issue persists and can win,” which he deemed the “most important aspect” of Election Day 2014.
“Candidates who articulated explicitly their commitment to life won and those who expected to use abortion as a ‘wedge issue’ to benefit the ‘pro-choice’ cause lost,” Moore said. “We should pray now that the newly elected Congress and the president will be able to work together for just policies that protect and promote human dignity, family stability and religious liberty.”
Voters in Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia approved pro-marijuana initiatives. Oregon’s measure, modeled on Washington state’s, will allow adults to buy marijuana for recreational use. A household can have up to 8 ounces of marijuana and cultivate up to four plants; consumption is banned in public. Alaska also legalized marijuana for recreational use.
Voters in Florida rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for the relief of chronic pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with eight major diseases. The measure required a vote of 60 percent in favor of passage but received 58 percent.
In Arkansas, Alaska, South Dakota and Nebraska, voters approved hiking the minimum wage. Voters in Illinois approved a nonbinding ballot question on raising the minimum wage.
The election leaves President Barack Obama without a Democratic-controlled chamber in Congress for the first time since his presidency began nearly six years ago. Conservatives see the change as an opportunity.
Rep. James Lankford, a Republican who has served four years in the House, said religious liberty — which is increasingly being challenged in conjunction with same-sex “marriage” and mandatory abortion coverage with health care plans — is a priority for him.
“People that have faith should be free to be able to live their faith in the workplace, at home, wherever they are,” Lankford said in a post-election webcast hosted by Family Research Council on Nov. 5. “So whether you are a chaplain in the military, whether you are a small business or a large business and choose to live and practice your business by biblical practices or whether you are just an individual trying to make decisions … and do it by biblical practices, that is your free choice as an American, and we’ve got to find ways to be able to protect that.”
Lankford, a Southern Baptist, was director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center for 13 years before his 2010 election to the House.
Daniel Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), said conservative Christians had an outsized influence in the 2014 elections because, among other reasons, deeply conservative states claimed a particularly large proportion of Senate races, with Democrats losing in Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia, among other states.
Add to that the unpopularity of President Obama and the fact that older — read “more conservative” — voters turn out in higher proportions during midterms.
‘Home-field advantage’
“Evangelicals were playing on their home turf,” Cox said. “They had home-field advantage because they were competing in states where they make up a much larger proportion of the population.”
But while “patterns of voting among religious voters is fairly stable … and is unlikely to change in the near future,” Cox continued, evangelicals may see their influence dwindle in the not-too-distant future.
Millennials — Americans ages 18 to 29 — are less likely to identify as evangelicals and much less likely to vote, according to PRRI and other surveys.
“In 2020 the entire millennial generation will be of voting age,” Cox said. “They are not voting in large numbers now. But they will. You settle down and you start voting more regularly.”
(BP, RNS)
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