Let's Tell Dole: Stop The Religious Hate

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Let's Tell Dole: Stop The Religious Hate
63
Sun, 11-02-2008 - 9:02pm

"CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan said she came to talk about issues, but it wasn't long after arriving at an early voting site in Charlotte that a few voters brought up what's become the focal point of the race - the "godless" ad that Sen. Elizabeth Dole is running against her.

"What a nasty campaign this has turned into at the last moment," Doug Gubbins, a retired computer programmer from Charlotte, said to Hagan as she worked the voting line at Marion Diehl Recreation Center.

As Carolina voters make their final decisions about who to vote for, the contest between Dole, the Republican incumbent, and Hagan, a Democratic state senator from Greensboro, brewed both on the airwaves and on the ground.

Dole began airing a second ad featuring a fundraiser for Hagan in Boston. The event, which was hosted by Democratic supporters, was held at the home of a man associated with the Godless Americans PAC, a group opposed to references to God in government.

In Dole's new ad, the announcer asks, "If Godless Americans threw a party in your honor, would you go?"

Hagan declined to talk about the ad war with reporters in Charlotte, except to say she would continue to pursue legal action. On Thursday, she initiated a lawsuit that claimed Dole's ad was false and defamatory.

On Friday, Dole responded by filing a motion to dismiss Hagan's "frivolous" suit. The motion said the lawsuit is "essentially a political press release that attempts to manufacture causes of action where none clearly exist."

The backlash against Dole continued with a church leader sending the senator a sharply-worded letter.

"We are writing to deplore as strongly as possible your recent 30-second television advertisement," wrote the Rev. Sekinah Hamlin, president of the N.C. Council of Churches, a coalition of 15 Christian denominations that work on racial, gender and economic issues. One of the churches that support the council's work is First Presbyterian of Greensboro, where Hagan serves as a Sunday school teacher and elder.

"We cannot remain silent when you challenge the beliefs of faithful fellow Christians and suggest that a leader in one of the state's oldest and largest denominations doesn't believe in God," wrote Hamlin, an ordained Disciples of Christ minister.

Mixing religion with politics didn't sit well with some voters either.

"I'm glad you're out here because I did not appreciate that," Charlotte nurse Barbara Sherman said to Hagan about Dole's ad.

Charlotte homemaker Leslie Hand said she was tuning out campaign ads because she knew the Republican Party shared her pro-life stance and other values.

"It's important to have people who will speak up for the values I believe in," said Hand, a Dole supporter.

Sharon Seward of Charlotte, a children's ministry director, said she doesn't like negative campaigning on either side and the candidates ought to stick to the issues. But she said Dole's ad did raise questions for her about Hagan.

"We need to know where people stand, but I want it always to be the truth," she said. "I would like to know where she stands but I don't know."

For one previously undecided voter, the Dole ad made the difference. Tom Carlin, a registered Republican and stay-at-home dad from Charlotte, said he'd decided to vote for Hagan after seeing it.

"The ad I saw showed a lot of desperation on her (Dole's) part," said Carlin, who has grown disenchanted with the direction that Republicans have brought the country in over the last eight years. "The separation of church and state is important to me. That was sort of a last-ditch effort to bring religion into it to try to galvanize that part of the electorate.""

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/750819.html

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2001
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 11:19pm

Godless Americans is a group of atheist.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 11:31pm

Godless Americans are not opposed to personal religious beliefs.


I did have to laugh at the part where you channelled

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 11-04-2008 - 10:06am

>No...I didn't compare the two groups there either.

Sandy

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