Walking the halls at the Washington Values Voter Summit, I ran into Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a Washington-based Christian Right activist, who revealed that he had sat down with DNC chair Howard Dean last week. Mahoney, a longtime DC fixture whose advocacy and gift for offering priceless quotes often lands him in the news, says Dean is the first DNC chair he’s ever sat down with and that he found him “quite warm, quite nice.” This comes a few weeks after reports circulated that Dean had met with Southern Baptist Convention public policy chief Richard Land, which marked Land’s first meeting with a DNC chair.
Noting that he has not met with the RNC anytime recent in memory–and that he didn’t think the RNC would grant a request to do so–Mahoney called Dean “100 percent committed to having a dialogue. Is that because of politics or because he honestly believes the political tone has gotten too harsh? It’s probably 50-50.”
“I feel the Republican Party sometimes takes the faith and values community for granted,” Mahoney added.
Would anyone have guessed that the liberal, secular Dean would become the first DNC chair to meet face-to-face with the leading lights of evangelical politics? I’m gonna keep an ear open for disclosures of more Dean-Christian Right powwows. I think I just saw Dr. James Dobson walk by…