Cullman Eula
 | |
| Era | The Nineties |
|---|---|
| Age | 62-78 |
| Home | Cullman, AL |
| Demographic | rural white, Southern Baptist, retired |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
| Successor | Jasper Faye |
Eula is a retired cafeteria worker in Cullman, Alabama, whose Southern Baptist church is the centre of the town's public life. She is the surest Republican vote among the cast's personas, and she is reached through the pulpit rather than through the party.
Who they stand for
Eula represents the rural white Southern Baptist voter that the political realignment of the South in the 1990s is largely made of. Alabama still elected Democrats to the state legislature in Montgomery and to Congress at the start of the decade. By the end of the decade, Senator Richard Shelby had switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, Fob James had won the governorship as a Republican, and Jeff Sessions held a Republican Senate seat. What moved voters like Eula was not the Republican Party organisation itself but the church. The Christian Coalition distributed voter guides in church pews before elections, and Roy Moore's fight to keep a Ten Commandments display in an Etowah County courtroom in 1995 gave her a form of politics that required no party organiser ever to call her directly. Eula is an older version of Plano Kimberly, denominational where Kimberly is non-denominational and rural where Kimberly is suburban. This line of personas continues through Jasper Faye and Iowa Martha, each of them fighting the political issue that the previous generation had already lost. For Eula, that issue is still abortion, and she still expects to win the argument.
Playing to them
Eula responds to restrictions on abortion, support for school prayer, and a president who speaks as a religious believer and lives as one; she has no interest in economic policy. Bill Clinton's two vetoes of a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion settled her opinion of him before the Lewinsky scandal confirmed it. A president of either party caught in a private scandal loses her support regardless of what else he signs into law. She cannot be reached by advertising or by a party mailing; she is reached only by her pastor and Christian radio, so a president wins her by giving them something favourable to say.
Winning Eula's support costs a president the support of Madison Steph, Castro Marty and Scarsdale Ellen outright, and it cools the support of Dunwoody Amanda. Greenwich Chip keeps voting for the party but stops donating money once the religious right is given a prominent role on the platform. This trade is worth making only in the South and the Plains states, where voters like Eula make up the largest share of the electorate, and only for a Republican candidate; a Democrat who courts her gains her respect but gains no votes.
Where they live
The five states where Cullman Eula makes up the largest share of the electorate in the nineties:
- Alabama
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
Lineage
Cullman Eula → Jasper Faye → Iowa Martha
The church lady. Her issue changes each decade because the previous one was lost: abortion, then marriage and Schiavo, then transgender and woke. Her information source changes from the church, to the church and Fox News, to Fox News alone. Her certainty that her side would win becomes the belief that America has lost its way. The voter is the same in Alabama and in Iowa.