COLUMBUS, Ind. - Barack Obama was waiting in the wings
when the priest began to bless his rally last week in this conservative, middle-class Indiana town.
"God of power and light open our hearts and minds to the needs of people all over the world," intoned the Rev. Clement Davis as 2,500 heads bowed reverentially in the local high school gym.
Davis said he had come at the request of a parishioner - not the campaign's behest - but the appearance of the priest came during a week when the Illinois senator intensified his efforts to win over Catholics, a constituency that has proved widely resistant to Obama's candidacy.
Catholics are among the most powerful swing voting blocs in American politics; they backed the winner in seven of the last eight presidential elections. And Obama's failure to connect with a majority of Catholics in the Democratic primaries is one of his campaign's biggest headaches - one that poses a major threat to his chances of winning heavily-Catholic Pennsylvania next week and the big prize in November, experts say.
"It's a big problem for him not just now but if he prevails and goes to the general election," said pollster Chris Borick, director of Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
"He's trailed in all of our polls among Catholics and that's been consistent in other polls," he said. He's frequently lost Catholics, who make up a quarter of the national electorate, by two-to-one margins against Hillary Rodham Clinton in many big states.
Comments won't help
Obama wasn't talking about Catholics specifically when he claimed small-town Americans were bitter and cling to guns and religion - but it will hardly help him make up lost ground.
To deal with the challenge, Obama's campaign is aggressively courting Catholics at the grassroots, while denying he has a Catholic problem.
Last week, the campaign kicked off an effort to win over Pennsylvania Catholics, led by Mark Linton, a former Senate staffer of Obama's who specializes in poverty issues and community organizing. The campaign is deploying neighborhood canvassing teams, holding Catholic debate parties, reaching out to allies in local parishes and using high-profile anti-abortion officials like Sen. Robert Casey to ease concerns about Obama's unabashedly pro-abortion-rights record.
On Friday, Obama announced the creation of a national Catholic advisory board led by Casey and former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer - all the while denying suggestions that Obama is alarmed by the voting patterns.
"Senator Obama's done really well with Catholics," Roemer said. "This perception that he doesn't do well with Catholics, that there's a gap there, it's not necessarily accurate."
To make his case, Roemer pointed to Obama's victories among Catholics in Wisconsin, Louisiana and Vermont.
But that's only part of the picture. In fact, Obama has lost eight of the top 10 states ranked by Catholic population - New York, California, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio and Michigan. He did win his home state of Illinois, with the nation's fourth largest Catholic population, but narrowly lost the Catholic vote to Clinton there.
Pattern seen repeating
Polls show the pattern could be repeated in sixth-ranked Pennsylvania, whose electorate is nearly one-third Catholic.
Casey, for his part, thinks grouping voters together under the label "Catholic" is a mistake because they are so diverse.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which has extensively studied the role of Christian denominations in American politics, divides Catholics into three ideological categories, each representing about 7 percent of general election voters. On the right are anti-abortion, socially conservative "traditionalists" who overwhelmingly supported George W. Bush in 2004; on the left are predominantly pro-abortion rights, secular "modernists' who backed John Kerry en masse; and in the middle are "centrists."
Aides to both campaigns agree that Clinton has a clear edge over Obama among the working-class voters, mostly white, who identify themselves as centrists and traditionalists, while both candidates split the vote of secular, better-educated Catholics.
Clinton has dominated among Latino Catholics, who make up about 3 percent of the general voting population.
"If you look at the exit poll data, it says Obama's got a Catholic problem," says Trinity College religion professor Mark Silk, who runs a Web site covering religion and politics. "But if you look deeper, you see that he doesn't do all that well among white Protestants either. So, I'd put it this way: He's got a white Christian problem and a Latino problem."
Catholics in key swing states
While the country's Catholic population is diverse, Obama seems to face the greatest skepticism from white, blue-collar Catholics in key swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, New Jersey and Michigan, Borick says.
"That's why his small-town comment is so damaging," he adds.
John McCain faces his own problems among Catholics, for his continued support for the Iraq war, his initial reluctance to aid homeowners facing foreclosure, and his relationship with a Texas preacher who has made anti-Catholic comments.
But Republicans have had recent success boosting turnout among GOP-leaning Catholics. After losing Catholics in 2000, George W. Bush's campaign launched a major effort to woo conservative Catholics by focusing on gay marriage, stem cell research and abortion.
Obama's advisers have laid out their own strategy for attracting Catholics, focused on defusing the heated controversies over abortion while energizing younger Catholics who are attracted to the pro-immigrant sentiments and commitment to social justice espoused by both Obama and the church.
"I work with a lot of young Catholic students and to a person they [said] Senator Obama was the one to become president - and if he wasn't they might leave the country," said Sister Catherine Pinkerton, a Washington-based children's' health advocate and member of Obama's Catholic advisory committee.