Cory Booker makes new hire to win over faith voters in South Carolina
Democratic presidential candidates coming to South Carolina are eager to court churchgoers, a constituency key to clinching the state’s primary election next year.
Cory Booker is taking this challenge one step further.
Last week, Aaron Bishop — the reverend of Grace Christian Church in Columbia for the last 12 years — officially began his duties as the Booker campaign’s faith outreach coordinator, a position specific to the candidate’s S.C. ground operation.
Bishop will continue as a church leader but will take on a lighter Sunday preaching schedule in order accommodate his new role: traveling around the state to pitch spiritual leaders on Booker, an African American U.S. senator from New Jersey, plus arrange introductions and mobilize supporters across the faith community.
“I have some very innovative and strategic ideas about how to get the churches motivated and be a part of this election,” Bishop told The State.
One of those ideas is to involve leaders in church communities beyond the pastors: “A lot of people approach the pastor but they don’t approach the deacon, or the mothers of the church, or the youth leaders, or the young adult pastors.”
Asked how important it was to win over faith voters in South Carolina, Bishop didn’t skip a beat.
“It is critical,” he told The State. “We are in the Bible Belt.”
Bishop, who has also served for the past nine years on the school board for Richland County School District 1, added that candidates with strong faith backgrounds would do best in South Carolina.
“It definitely matters. It speaks to a commonality of feeling that we have a man of faith,” Bishop said. “I can appreciate a man who steps out by faith to run for an office. In a time such as this, he must have faith. I believe (Booker) is a man of faith.”
Other campaigns in South Carolina have faith outreach components, but most have this responsibility as part of a staffer’s larger portfolio.
U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California both have state deputy political directors whose chief duties involve faith outreach, and each of the two candidates has been endorsed by faith leaders.
For former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, faith outreach falls under the purview of the S.C. campaign’s political directors and their deputies.
And Paige Hill, former Vice President Joe Biden’s S.C. communications director, told The State that “one of our highest priorities in South Carolina is to bring on a full-time faith coordinator in the coming weeks.” In the meantime, she said, Biden’s S.C. state director has been helping lay the groundwork.
But Booker appears to be the first presidential candidate near the “top tier” of a two-dozen person field who has created a paid position for just this purpose: to be focused exclusively on the faith community in the critical early primary state.
Booker’s campaign is making this investment as it seeks to stand out in a crowded arena and struggles to catch up in both state and national polls. Monmouth University’s first S.C. poll in the 2020 cycle, released Thursday, found that of 405 S.C. voters likely to vote in the Feb. 29 Democratic primary — surveyed from July 18 to 22 — Booker is in 6th place, with 2% support.
Bishop remains confident that Booker has what it takes to win South Carolina — and that he can help Booker get there.
“I’m encouraged to be with Sen. Booker in this journey to the White House,” he said.
Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 26, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Cory Booker makes new hire to win over faith voters in South Carolina."
