Megachurch Heather
 | |
| Era | The 2000s |
|---|---|
| Age | 40-49 |
| Home | Frisco, TX |
| Demographic | white, evangelical, homeschool mother |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
| Predecessor | Plano Kimberly |
| Successor | Heartland Hank |
Heather is a homeschooling mother of four in the Dallas exurbs, whose Baptist megachurch is also her political organisation. She represents the values voters of the Bush years, for whom the phone bank, the marriage-amendment campaign and the Schiavo vigil ran from the same building.
Who they stand for
White evangelical Christians made up about a quarter of the national electorate in 2004, and gave Bush close to four-fifths of their votes. Eleven states passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage that year, and Texas followed in 2005, passing with about three-quarters in favour, work largely done by church phone banks. The Terri Schiavo case in March 2005 was the high point of the religious-right movement and also its first defeat. Congress passed emergency legislation over the Palm Sunday weekend and Bush flew back to sign it, but the courts still ruled against the family, and public opinion sided with the courts. The number of homeschooled children passed one million, much on Bible-based curricula, and the 2005 evolution fights in Kansas and in Dover, Pennsylvania, were the classroom version of this politics. James Dobson's Focus on the Family was the movement's organising centre. The withdrawal of Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination in 2005 showed what the movement did when Bush disappointed it.
In the lineage of personas, the predecessor's church is a social world, and the successor's is a shelter. Heather's is an organisation, and her generation is the one that tried to ban things through politics and succeeded.
Playing to them
Heather responds well to a president who bans practices she opposes and appoints judges she trusts. She supports the marriage amendment, the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, judges vetted by her movement, school vouchers, the faith-based initiative, school prayer, support for Israel, and a guest-worker programme, an issue where she is softer than the rest of the religious right. She will not forgive abortion rights, gay marriage, a court left to rule on Schiavo, mandatory sex education, evolution, or mockery of religious belief. A Republican who disappoints her on a judicial nomination is punished, as Miers was. No Democrat of this era wins her support.
Winning Heather's support costs the cast's secular liberals, such as Protest Paige, Berkeley Leonard, Park Slope Dana and Beltway Meredith, and its libertarian and establishment Republicans, such as Startup Seth and Country Club Whit, who want her kept out of the party's public image. The Schiavo case is the sharpest dividing line. Standing with Heather and Jasper Faye on it loses Security Mom Donna, Snowbird Angela and Whit, three otherwise reachable votes. Faye holds the same positions as Heather, but Heather is the one who organises other voters around them.
Where they live
The five states where Megachurch Heather makes up the largest share of the electorate in the 2000s:
- Nebraska
- Utah
- Oklahoma
- Idaho
- Arizona
Lineage
Plano Kimberly → Megachurch Heather → Heartland Hank
Evangelical strong Republicans, and what changes is whether they are trying to ban things or trying to protect themselves. Kimberly's church organises her whole social life, and its politics reach her without her noticing them as politics. Heather's church is a political organisation that passes marriage amendments and fights for Terri Schiavo. By 2019 the marriage fight is lost and abortion has gone to the Supreme Court, so Hank's evangelical politics are defensive: he wants to be left alone and respected, and he votes for Trump, who is nothing like a Christian, because Trump fights the people Hank believes are attacking him. The line is the evangelical vote, which does not depend on sex.