Campaign '98: The Religious Right's Kiss Of Death.

Somebody on the Americans United staff told me a big fib. He said that when I arrived at the border of Colorado Springs, Religious Right leader James Dobson's hometown, on my recent Western "road-trip," I'd find that the "Welcome to Colorado Springs" sign would have an asterisk, pointing to a line reading, "Unless you are Barry Lynn." There is no such exclusionary designation on the sign.

Indeed, I spent most of the six weeks before the election on the road. In the case of my visit to Colorado, I was there in large part because of a dangerous anti-public school "tuition tax-credit" initiative which would have funneled money to religious schools. (It was ultimately defeated by a 3-2 margin.) At the request of the coalition group Coloradans for Public Schools, of which our Colorado chapter is a key member, I did radio and television shows, public speeches and newspaper interviews to debunk the value and constitutionality of this measure.

During other recent trips, including stops in Washington, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Oregon and New Jersey (hey, it is west of the Atlantic Ocean), I found a degree of enthusiasm for the message of church-state separation that was truly heartening. In Milwaukee and Portland, for example, overflow crowds came to presentations, and some had to stand for an hour and a half.

There was similar reaction at several annual Planned Parenthood dinners where I was the after-dinner speaker. People kept saying they were "motivated," "energized," "reconnected" or "excited." Call it a "psychic vibration" or just "the pulse of experience," but I could tell that these people were upset by all the pundits and pollsters telling them they were not going to vote. I also noted a lot of resentment toward the Religious Right's agenda and its claim to represent "mainstream values."

Come election night, when virtually every famous television talking head seemed to be doing more head scratching then anything else, my wife got it right when she asked, "Why didn't these guys see what you've been talking about every time you get home?" Perhaps it's because they take the pulse of the electorate by sitting on chairs in Washington interviewing each other. They need to get out more.

What did the Religious Right get out of the millions of dollars it spent in the final few weeks of Campaign '987 Embarrassingly little, it seemed to me on Wednesday. But I wanted to hear their take on it, so I got up early that morning to go over to the National Press Club in Washington to listen to Family Research Council head Gary Bauer and Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition, "spin" the previous night's results. When I saw Bauer before his event and said I was there to hear him explain the election, he quipped, "I think I'm in trouble already."

Half an hour later, I ran into Tate who, apparently forgetting that he has referred to me as a "thug" and a "so-called minister" over the past weeks, eagerly invited me to sit down and listen to his press conference.

At each event, I had the distinct feeling I was listening to an analysis of an election on some planet other than Earth. Bauer and Tate claimed that many GOP candidates lost because they were not clear enough on the "pro-family" agenda and therefore failed to excite the conservative Christian voters, who stayed home.

It just doesn't wash. If running on the Religious Right's issues will help a candidate win, then why did Pennsylvania's Republican pro-choice governor Tom Ridge get so many crossover Democratic votes that he was easily reelected while in Iowa Republican Jim Lightfoot, who campaigned on the theme, "It's all about life," lose dramatically?

Why did the two incumbent governors most clearly allied with the Religious Right agenda, Fob James of Alabama and David Beasley of South Carolina, lose their jobs? Opined Tate, "Some agenda beats no agenda every time." In truth, voters heard Gov. James talk about prayer in school, the Ten Commandments in courthouses and creation science in the science classroom ad nauseam and decided they'd had enough.

Tate and his Christian Coalition colleagues might have been a little less eager to have me sit in if they had known that I would be holding an impromptu press conference right in the hallway outside their press room. My message to the media was pretty straightforward. A significant portion of the electorate did send a message to the Religious Right and its political sycophants: "Sit down and be quiet." Too close an identification with far right causes was the kiss of death in closely contested elections.

And oh, remember that Religious Right threat to defeat House members who voted against Rep. Ernest Istook's so-called "Religious Freedom Amendment?" Well, of the 203 members who voted against that amendment, two were not reelected -- and one was defeated by someone more committed to church-state separation.

Do these results mean the Religious Right is a paper tiger? No, because any group that can spend millions of dollars before an election is still a force to be reckoned with. Call them "a plastic windup tiger," though. Unless they get some new energy to get wound up, more of their issues and anointed candidates will be called losers in future elections.

Barry W. Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.