Progressive Senate candidates invoke faith as campaign strategy echoes decades-old GOP playbook

Three progressive Democratic Senate candidates are folding religious language into their campaign messaging, drawing explicit comparisons between their policy positions and the teachings of Jesus Christ. The tactic mirrors the faith-based coalition-building Republicans deployed in the late 1970s, when the Moral Majority formed as the GOP sought to tie policy to Christian identity ahead of Ronald Reagan's candidacy.

Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon delivered the most direct version of the argument. Speaking at Saint Paul AME Church in Jacksonville, she told the congregation that opponents labeling her an extremist were missing a historical point. "Jesus was a radical," Nixon said, arguing that Christ pushed for the same things she is fighting for today. She framed the current moment as a civil rights period, whether people choose to accept that framing or not. Her primary win came against Alexander Vindman, a central figure in President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial who carried the backing of the Democratic establishment in Washington. Nixon will face Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in November. Her June membership in the Democratic Socialists of America drew immediate fire from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP's campaign arm, which moved to tie her to socialism. Nixon has denied being a Democratic socialist.

Abdul El-Sayed approached the same comparison from a different position. He is Muslim and running in Michigan's toss-up race against former Rep. Mike Rogers. On the Progressive Christians Podcast in May, asked why his positions were being targeted as radical, El-Sayed said Jesus "was considered radical in his time, too," and argued that principled public dissent is itself a response to what he called the normalization of corruption.

Of the three, Texas state Rep. James Talarico has made faith most central to his candidacy. He has been taking seminary classes toward becoming a Presbyterian minister while running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. His 2021 pushback against Texas's anti-trans legislation drew the most sustained Republican counterattack. Citing the first two lines of Genesis, Talarico argued those lines use two Hebrew words for God, one masculine and one feminine. "God is non-binary," he said. That quote has since become a recurring line of Republican attack in the current race.