Newsweek: Richard Flory on “Evangelicals for Harris”
A pro-Harris group of evangelicals used footage of the late Rev. Billy Graham to try to convince evangelicals not to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Newsweek asked CRCC’s Richard Flory whether the “Evangelicals for Harris” advertisement would be effective with voters.
The ad, Flory said, is “a political marketing technique to sway evangelical voters, but they are trying to put lipstick on the pig.”
Read an excerpt of the piece:
“Graham famously supported [Richard] Nixon—the only other Republican presidential candidate [besides Trump] who received over 80 percent of the evangelical vote,” Flory said.
Evangelicals “are predominantly conservative, even reactionary in their politics, and most, regardless the efforts of groups like Evangelicals for Harris, will still vote for Trump,” he said. “So, if they are using Billy Graham as an exemplar of their claim that true Christian values are represented in Democratic policies and principles, they are choosing the wrong person.”
He said he doubted the group would have “widespread impact within evangelicalism, but it may have some success with evangelicals who do not want to be associated with Trump and thus pick up enough votes for Harris to make a difference in the election.”