Jasper Faye
 | |
| Era | The 2000s |
|---|---|
| Age | 60-69 |
| Home | Jasper, AL |
| Demographic | white, Southern Baptist, retired |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
| Predecessor | Cullman Eula |
| Successor | Iowa Martha |
Faye is a retired school-cafeteria manager and lifelong Sunday-school teacher in the Alabama coalfields, representing Southern Baptist churchwomen during the years of the marriage-amendment campaigns. She votes Republican on the issues her church cares about, and is the most certain voter in the cast.
Who they stand for
White evangelical Christians made up about a quarter of the national electorate in 2004, and nearer half in Alabama, and gave Bush close to four-fifths of their votes. In 2001 Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore installed a monument to the Ten Commandments in the state judicial building. He defied a federal court order to remove it and was removed from office in 2003, amid public vigils in his support. Alabama's churches had already defeated a lottery referendum proposed by Governor Don Siegelman in 1999. In June 2006 Alabama voters passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, with about four-fifths in favour. The Terri Schiavo case in 2005, in which Congress passed emergency legislation over a weekend and the courts still ruled against the family, taught Faye that judges, not Democrats, were her real opponents. Alabama's poultry plants drew Mexican workers, and in 2011 the state passed the country's harshest immigration law, dividing its churches. The 2006 rollout of Medicare Part D confused pensioners like Faye.
In her lineage, the central issue changes each decade because the previous generation's fight was lost. Faye's issue is marriage. Her generation is the one in this lineage that won its fight at home.
Playing to them
Faye responds well to the marriage amendment, school prayer, education vouchers, judges who defer to elected legislatures, support for Israel, troops honoured by name, and a president who prays openly and without embarrassment. She will not forgive support for abortion rights, gay marriage, a court ruling against her church, mockery of faith, or evolution taught as mandatory in textbooks. She opposes welfare spending and immigration amnesty too, but with less intensity. No Democratic candidate of this era can win her support. A Southern Democrat who speaks comfortably about faith and avoids guns and abortion can at most reduce her turnout rather than win her vote.
Winning Faye's support costs the cast's secular liberals and libertarians, such as Berkeley Leonard, Park Slope Dana, Protest Paige and Startup Seth, and it embarrasses Country Club Whit, who wants the Schiavo case and intelligent design kept out of his party's platform. Fremont Anjali leaves the coalition over what is taught in schools. Megachurch Heather holds the same positions as Faye and organises other voters around them. Faye is the vote that this organising turns out, but she needs to hear the same message from both the pulpit and the kitchen radio before she moves.
Where they live
The five states where Jasper Faye makes up the largest share of the electorate in the 2000s:
- Alabama
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
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.