By: Keith Miller

14 Nov. 2002 A Premature Demise: Steve Largent's defeat leaves the Religious Right without a leader

Steve Largent has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember. His gubernatorial defeat last Tuesday was a sour note on an otherwise victorious night. Though my personal interest in Largent tuned me into the race, his defeat may have far-reaching consequences for the religious right.

My first sports memory is watching the Seattle Seahawks lose the AFC Championship Game to the Los Angeles Raiders in 1984. The beleaguered Seahawks have always been my favorite team and their wide receiver Steve Largent is their lone representative in the Hall of Fame.

But my affinity for Largent extends beyond the football field. After his retirement in 1989, Largent returned to his childhood home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He lives there with his wife of twenty-seven years, Terry, and his four children.

Largent returned to the public eye in 1994 when he ran for an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He won as part of the powerful landslide led by Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America. His Tulsa constituency returned him to office in '96, '98 and 2000 with increasing majorities in each successive year.

My hero in the sporting world became my hero in the political world. Largent became a leading advocate for conservative policies and grew to be the favorite of the pro-family religious right.

Now, I understand that when someone is identified as a leader of the "religious right," most people, even conservatives, are turned off. The religious right is associated with televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and generally connotes some sinister plan to place "Church Lady" type censors in every bedroom in America. This caricature is unfortunate, because it ridicules a segment of the conservative movement that was essential to the election of Reagan, Bush, and Bush. Many voters' political convictions---throughout the Sunbelt and the rest of the country---are motivated by their evangelical or fundamentalist religious beliefs. Though some of them tend towards single-issue voting, especially on the question of Abortion rights, many of these Christians form the conservative base of the Republican Party.

My interest in Steve Largent began to pique when he resigned from the House earlier this year to run for Governor of Oklahoma. Although traditionally a Democratic state, Oklahoma has been swinging conservative over the last couple of decades; mirroring a larger trend throughout the South. The retiring Republican governor, Frank Keating, has been hailed for his solid conservative record. Largent became the instant favorite, using his name recognition and popular policies to build a lead of more than twenty points.

I began to dream. A Largent victory, followed by his re-election in 2006, would put the 48-year-old in great position to make a Presidential run in 2008. He would be the strongest candidate ever fielded by religious sector of the conservative movement. Pat Robertson in 1988 and Gary Bauer in 2000 had attempted to carry the banner of the religious right, but Robertson finished third and Bauer finished eighth (... and endorsed John McCain!).

Robertson and Bauer typified the shortcomings of many in the religious right. They sounded pedantic and paranoid while failing to couch their message in terms appealing enough to garner the nomination. Largent was the antithesis of this part of the religious right. His campaign image was sleek, attractive and professional. Pat Robertson was known for "praying away a hurricane." Largent was known as a humanitarian who won the NFL's Man of the Year award. Gary Bauer was the shortest Presidential candidate of the television era and would give Ross Perot a run for his money in a beauty contest. Largent was selected as one of the People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" (insert joke regarding Perot's ears here). Largent had not moderated his conservative agenda, which included an extensive school choice plan and pro-business tax cuts; instead he packaged his plans in an immanently electable way.

Or, so I thought.

Largent's seemingly smooth road to victory began to go awry when former Republican Gary Richardson entered the race as an Independent. Richardson, a McCain supporter, advocated a platform based primarily on a state lottery and a moderate Republican agenda. Richardson's campaign made political hay from Largent's allegedly spotty attendance while in the House of Representatives. Richardson further raised the character issue by showing clips where Largent misrepresented his whereabouts and called a line of questioning "b*** ****." These lines of attack are ineffective in many campaigns, but for some reason Largent floundered. The limited amount of support from the national Republican establishment may have hurt him, but nothing from that camp officially condemned him.

Despite all of these difficulties, Largent was still favored to win in the final week before the election. Alas, the pollsters had another bad year and the Democratic candidate Brad Henry eeked out a victory by a margin of 6,357 votes out of more than one million cast. Henry and Largent both garnered 43 percent of the vote, while Richardson pulled 14 percent. Two different reactions result from this defeat. On one hand, I think that the religious right can feel some righteous indignation that their candidate lost because of a splinter moderate. "Big tent" Republicans are always lecturing religious conservatives that they need to show party loyalty even when the candidate is less than desirable. Support that flows to groups like the U.S. Taxpayers Party when both major parties nominate pro-choice candidates is ridiculed. Yet in this instance, Republican moderates showed exactly the same propensity to bolt. Republicans who voted for Richardson should be ashamed of themselves.

But besides anger, the religious right should also feel saddened by the untimely dimming of their rising star. Steve Largent could have been to the religious right what Ronald Reagan was to the conservative movement. While Barry Goldwater alienated supporters with his perceived extremism, Reagan framed positions almost wholly similar to Goldwater's in a fashion palatable to the electorate. Largent also had that ability.

The blame, at least in part, must fall on his shoulders. Though I do not know the validity of the allegations, it is clear that Largent showed human frailty. I would love for him to get back on the horse and rehabilitate his career, but I believe he will probably be content to enjoy his family in a return to private life.

But the religious right will not recover so easily. No other politician currently on the scene has the requisite abilities to carry religious conservatism forward. The time that a member of the religious right will receive a platform on the national Republican ticket seems indefinitely postponed.

Maybe it will happen around the time the Seahawks reach their first Super Bowl.