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Rick Santorum in Michigan
Rick Santorum's popularity has seen him catapult into the lead in Michigan – a state Mitt Romney had been favourite to win. Photograph: James Fassinger
Rick Santorum's popularity has seen him catapult into the lead in Michigan – a state Mitt Romney had been favourite to win. Photograph: James Fassinger

Evangelicals spread the gospel of Rick Santorum in blue-collar Michigan

This article is more than 12 years old
Santorum has a working-class appeal to go with his faith – and that has made him the favourite in Mitt Romney's home state

Outside a Christian store in the middle of a maze of suburban strip malls, Grace Rozelle has no doubt about what matters to her in the Republican primary battle for Michigan.

"Abortion is the really big thing for me. It has always been extremely important because of my faith," explained the 69-year-old retired schoolteacher. "I love Jesus and he created all of us."

Michigan evangelicals.
Grace Rozelle, 69 of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photograph: James Fassinger

Rozelle was standing on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, just a few streets away from the Mars Hill Bible Church, an evangelical mega-church built out of a converted shopping mall. Such displays of religious conviction are usually not seen as vital to Michigan's political landscape, which is more typically dominated by heavy industry and struggling city economies like Detroit and Flint.

But Rick Santorum is changing all that.

The former Pennsylvania senator has surged into contention in the 2012 race on the back of a stunning hat-trick of victories in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. He has banded together religious social conservatives and Tea Party supporters, creating a powerful challenge to frontrunner Mitt Romney in national polls. It has also seen him catapult into the lead in Michigan, a state that only weeks ago Detroit-born Romney assumed was virtually guaranteed. One Michigan poll had Santorum ahead by 15 points, and the last four surveys all show him maintaining a lead.

Now if Santorum can beat Romney in Michigan on February 28, he would deal a hugely damaging blow to the former Massachusetts governor's campaign, and achieve something few experts ever believed possible: become a real contender for the Republican nomination. "It is absolutely going to be a competitive race in Michigan now," said Stu Sandler, a top Republican strategist in the state.

Santorum's surge in Michigan is in many ways based around Grand Rapids, Michigan's second biggest city and a regional centre for evangelical Christians. "In Grand Rapids it is hard to throw a rock and not hit a church," said Professor Kevin den Dulk, a political scientist at Calvin College, a local Christian university. Indeed, Rozelle isn't the only one in the area who places a great deal of importance on religion in politics. In 2008, 39% of Michigan voters in that year's Republican primary identified themselves as evangelical.

Michigan evangelicals
Jason Blick, 35, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photograph: James Fassinger

Inside the Christian store where Rozelle was doing some shopping, the manager, Jason Blik, 30, says his faith helps inform everything from abortion to foreign policy. "As a person of faith I believe Israel is very important," he said. "If it comes to a choice between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, I am edging towards Santorum, but I still need to do some more research."

Outside Grand Rapids, western Michigan stretches away in counties like Kent, Kalamazoo and Ottawa that are the Michigan's evangelical heartland. Far from the blue-collar, heavily Democrat parts of the state, this is red state America. The head of Ottawa County's Republican party, local attorney Adam Tountas, believes Santorum can beat Romney. "Santorum has a chance. It is easily foreseeable to think that either of them could win this," he said.

Santorum's core appeal is aimed solidly at the Republican party's evangelical foot soldiers. Santorum wears his faith on his sleeve, touting his lifelong devout Roman Catholicism, staunch anti-abortion beliefs, happy marriage and seven children. Romney's Mormon faith, on the other hand, is seen by some as a fringe religion, and hampers him in his outreach to the community. But for Santorum it comes easily and in straightforward language. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club in the downtown of America's car capital, Santorum appealed to a lunch meeting of local businessmen for the country to get back to simple values. "We have to create a culture consistent with the values of our country … believing in freedom, faith and family," he said.

In order to cement support with Christian voters in the state, Santorum's campaign quickly signed up influential Michigan social conservative Glenn Clark, head of the state's Faith and Family Coalition. "We have a tremendous network of people who are going to come out. The evangelicals I am talking to about a month ago were spread out all over the map. Now they are concentrating and being drawn to Rick Santorum," Clark told the Guardian.

Clark pointed out that a recent political row over some religious organisations having to provide contraception as part of President Obama's healthcare coverage had boosted the Santorum campaign by putting social issues back into national US politics. "We see the onslaught against our religious liberties from Obama. Evangelicals know Rick Santorum will be a fighter for our rights in Washington," Clark said.

God and mammon

But faith voters alone will not win Michigan. Santorum also needs a convincing economic message. Michigan, with its manufacturing base having endured decades of decline, is job-hungry, and Santorum needs to prescribe solid economic medicine amid the faith healing. But, unlike the wealthy Romney, Santorum has working-class roots in the Pennsylvania coal country and strikes a populist tone. He portrays himself as the ordinary man-in-the-street that Romney cannot. "Santorum is a working-class guy who can speak the language, whereas Romney is someone seen as born with a silver spoon in his mouth," said Den Dulk, the Calvin College professor.

It is an overlooked part of Santorum's appeal. In Detroit, Santorum spoke emotionally of his childhood in a working-class family descended from Italian immigrants. "My grandfather was a coalminer. I knew that was our wealth. It was not great wealth, it was not opulent wealth, but it allowed folks to sustain families," he said. Santorum went on to explain economic policies that imagine cutting corporate taxes and simplifying regulation while slashing away at welfare benefits. But he also put a stress on boosting manufacturing, saying he will remove all corporate taxes on US manufacturing firms.

Michigan evangelicals
Darren Kornelis, a student at the Calvin College Christian Reform School. Photograph: James Fassinger

Santorum needs to talk jobs because in terms of social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, there is little real policy difference between the main Republican candidates. That actually allows other issues to come through for the religious base. On the Calvin College campus, it was easy to meet evangelical voters. But they had a wide range of concerns. Student Darren Kornelius, 20, who is the fifth generation of his devout family to go to Calvin, is a fan of Ron Paul's economic ideas. "Morals are important to me. But I am not going to not vote for someone because I don't share their religious background," he said. Even Tountas – the attorney in evangelical-heavy Ottawa county – said the economy was the biggest issue. "The economy is the No 1 factor in our politics at the moment," he said.

Michigan evangelicals
Jeremy Smith, strategic communications student at Calvin College Christian Reform School. Photograph: James Fassinger

Back at Calvin, however, Jeremy Smith, 19, who is studying communications, paused between classes and said he was likely to cast his first ever vote in the Republican primary. He did not yet know whom for. "It is in God's hands," he said.

But no one in the Santorum campaign is taking it quite that for granted. They know that if they can pull off a win in Michigan, it would tear a huge hole in Romney's stance as the frontrunner. But he will need to blend God and Mammon to come up with a heady mix of faith and wealth creation.

In his speeches, he already links family values directly with a healthier economy and a smaller government. "Unless we have strong families and strong communities we are not going to be an economically successful country," he said in Detroit. If that blended message starts to take off with voters could Santorum actually win on Romney's home turf?

"Sure he could," said Den Dulk.

Photographs by James Fassinger

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