NORTH COUNTY -- Capturing the Christian vote could prove a key factor in determining who emerges victorious in the 50th Congressional District race, two campaign consultants and the leader of a local Christian coalition said last week.

North County campaign consultant Jack Orr said that in order to maximize their chances in the race to replace disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, candidates should work to capture the votes of religious congregations -- a strategy that was successfully used by the campaign for President Bush in the run-up to the 2004 election.

"These groups vote in very, very high percentages, and they are very committed and emotionally involved with their issues," Orr said.

He added that if he were working for any of the candidates in the 50th District race, one of the first things he would do would be to tell the candidate to contact North County religious leaders of faith-based groups to ask for a personal endorsement, "and then devise some means to communicate with members."

With a crowded field of 12 candidates -- and the possibility of more joining the fray in an April special election that is expected to see relatively low voter turnout -- the religious vote could prove to be even more important than in other races, San Diego-based campaign consultant Tom Shepard said last week.

"The advantage will go to any candidate who can reach out to a particular interest group and secure their votes," Shepard said. "This is a battle to find voters who can deliver 15 or 20 percent of the electorate."

Christian votes helped one

Orr said that one 50th District candidate who successfully wooed religious groups in an earlier election was Howard Kaloogian, who was elected to the state Assembly in 1994, a position he held through 2000.

"When Kaloogian won his Assembly seat, no one saw him coming, but he had established a solid base with faith-based organizations," Orr said.

Kaloogian acknowledged the importance of Christian voters in his victory Wednesday.

"I guess that's true. The groups that supported me back then and I had an interesting coalition, and faith-based groups were one part of it," he said.

A look at Kaloogian's Web site, www.kaloogianforcongress.org, shows that he has already received endorsements from a half-dozen religious leaders.

"I am reaching out to the entire constituency, and the church community is a very important aspect of that," he said. "There are very large churches and a very large church-going population in North County."

One such large organization is Escondido-based Congregations for Civic Action, a coalition of 10 North County churches that have a combined membership of more than 14,000 families, the group's president, Socorro Anderson, said Thursday. The group advocates for greater access to housing, health care and jobs, mostly for low-income families in the region.

As it does in many elections, the group plans to hold candidate forums in the run-up to the 50th District's November election, Anderson said, adding that the group does not endorse any single candidate, instead encouraging its members to make up their own minds.

However, any candidate who can convince Christian voters that he or she will fight on behalf of those families could reap the benefits on the day of the election, Anderson said.

"It can sway the vote one way or the other," Anderson said.

Crowded field

In late November, Cunningham tearfully announced his resignation from Congress after pleading guilty in federal court to having received more than $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for steering tens of millions of dollars in government contracts to two defense contractors.

In the wake of his resignation, a slew of Republicans announced their candidacies for the GOP nomination to replace him. The 50th District covers most of North County and stretches south into parts of San Diego. With 159,000 registered Republicans versus 106,000 registered Democrats, the district seat has long been considered a safe one for the GOP. However, in the wake of the Cunningham scandal, Democrats both locally and nationally have said they believe there has never been a better time for an upset.

In addition to Kaloogian, nine other Republicans have declared their candidacies: state Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside; former Congressman Brian Bilbray; businessmen Alan Uke and Ken King; former California Highway Patrol Sgt. Jeff Newsome; retired businessman Donald Pando; former Del Mar Mayor Richard Earnest; former NFL player Scott Turner; and the former vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees local 3723, Milton L. Gale.

So far, two Democrats have announced they are in the race: Cardiff School District board member Francine Busby, who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee against Cunningham in 2004; and former banking executive Chris Young.

Candidates' strategies vary

In interviews last week, several of the candidates or their campaign managers said they recognized the importance of capturing the religious vote in the coming election.

All of them stressed, however, that faith-based groups represent just one segment of the electorate they will be courting. They also noted that they merely respond to requests by congregations to come and speak to them about their values and politics.

Morrow is a staunch conservative who makes no secret of his religious convictions. He has come out strongly against same-sex marriage and abortion, and has said that he supports President Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiative, a program that seeks to increase government funding to religious organizations to provide social programs.

So for him, Morrow said, it is only natural that Christian voters represent an important segment of the electorate, while noting that he also has the support of Jewish and Muslim groups.

"I am going to gravitate to people who think like me," he said last week. "In 13 years in elected office, I have never turned down an opportunity to praise the Lord, whether in churches or prayer breakfasts."

Morrow's campaign manager said that his job is to allow Morrow to continue to "find groups receptive to his profile."

Justin stressed, however, that religious groups are not the only ones that he targets to try to get Morrow's message out.

"I look at who Bill is and assemble a coalition accordingly," Justin said.

That strategy just makes good campaign sense and it wouldn't serve Morrow's interests to target groups that have no affinity for the senator's message, Justin said. "I am not going to send Morrow to a union hall."

In a phone interview last week, Bilbray said that while he will go to speak at congregations whenever he is invited, he does not have a specific strategy for capturing the religious vote.

"I have not specifically earmarked any specific religious faction in my campaign," Bilbray said last week. "I can just as well meet the people standing in Communion line as I can standing in line at the grocery store."

Similarly, Democrat Busby said she was not focusing her campaign on religious groups.

"I don't have a special plan to meet with people at churches," she said.

Busby's communication director, Brennan Bilberry, said last week that while Busby had visited several religious congregations in the last month, she didn't target those groups any differently than she does other potential voters.

"Church leaders are community leaders and you reach out to them in the exact same way you reach out to a City Council member in Escondido," he said.

Wooing Christian voters

Orr said that it was common for "some candidates to go to two or three churches every Sunday."

"Some do it out of conviction, and there are others who do it out of political opportunism," Orr added.

Some candidates will use every tool available to them to woo Christian voters, Orr said.

And while churches generally do not give official endorsements to specific candidates, there are ways for candidates to accomplish the goal of courting those voters, Orr said.

A candidate can convince a church leader to provide him or her with the addresses and phone numbers of members, or buy mailing lists from brokers that are specifically targeted to groups of people that have strong feelings about hot-button issues such as abortion or gun control, Orr said. Then the candidate can send out direct-mail pieces using those lists.

Another technique is to get the personal endorsement of influential members of a congregation and then use those endorsements in a flier that is distributed in the church parking lot. Or a candidate can arrange to make a public appearance with the leader of a faith-based organization, or make an appearance to shake hands at local churches after Sunday services.

Consultant Shepard said that it was hard to judge how carefully candidates work to capture the Christian votes.

"So much of that stuff happens below the radar screen. There is no way of really knowing those (types of campaigning) happen, unless you show up at every church service," Shepard said.

Old tradition

One election analyst said last week that candidates targeting Christian voters during campaigns is an old practice.

"It's always been there," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont-Mckenna College professor of government and former researcher for the Republican National Committee.

"The difference is, Republicans in recent years have made more use of it (the practice of targeting Christian voters), as we have seen the emergence of the religious right," Pitney said. "For a long time, it was Democrats who made far more use of religious congregations."

He said that in 2004, the Bush campaign made very effective use of direct mailings that targeted congregations.

In 2004, The New York Times reported that the Bush-Cheney campaign had sent a top political operative to "recruit pastors at the annual meeting of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention." The story also said that the campaign asked volunteers to talk up Bush and Cheney at bible study classes and church groups, and to provide the campaign with congregational directories. Political analysts at the time credited the effort to drum up support among Christian congregations as a significant factor in Bush's election success.

Pitney noted that while some church leaders may be hesitant to provide church member directories to candidates, "They are not hard to get.

"If church leaders will not provide them, there may be a friendly member of the congregation who has a directory that he or she can pass along," Pitney said.

As did consultant Shepard, Pitney said that reaching out to religious groups could prove to be an important strategy in the 50th District race.

"It could be useful, especially in a multicandidate field where every candidate is looking to set themselves apart from others," he said.

Jewish voters

But churches aren't the only houses of worship to which candidates should be making overtures, said Rabbi Hillel Silverman, of Vista's Congregation B'nai Shalom, which means Children of Peace.

Silverman said Friday that there are about 15-20 synagogues in North County, with thousands of members.

While Jewish voters tend to be of all political persuasions, "it would help" candidates to seek out those congregations and speak of their values and political platforms, Silverman said.

Issues that tend to resonate with many Jewish voters, Silverman said, are such things as privacy, family, education, the environment and fiscal policy. And with the right message, a candidate could capture a significant number of votes, he added.

Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426, or wbennett@nctimes. com. To comment, go to www.nctimes.com.