Megan Basham

You know, John, I think what we're seeing is something of a shift in how Democrats are approaching voters of faith, particularly evangelical Christians.

You know, for years, there's been this perceived, I would say, hostility between the Democratic Party and Christians.

We saw, for example, the 2012 DNC remove God from the party platform.

I'm also thinking of Barack Obama.

talking about how those voters tend to cling to guns and religion.

So I think we've realized, though, that they can't afford to alienate those voters anymore.

And so we've seen Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Gavin Newsom using biblical language.

And now what we're seeing is a rollout of this new crop of candidates who are running in red states and they're really trading on their faith on the campaign trail.

So Matt Schultz, for example, is a Presbyterian pastor who is running as a Democrat in Alaska's only House seat.

This was his official campaign launch video.

And then Tallarico, who you mentioned, often talks about being a seminary student on the campaign trail.

Sarah Trone Garriott is a Lutheran minister running for a congressional seat in Iowa.

So I'd say, John, that we're seeing enough of this that it seems like something of a deliberate strategy.

You know, I would say that many of them are the usual issues you would expect from religious progressives like here with Tallarico.

Plenty of Christians would disagree with the application of those verses, but they would probably agree with the principles of caring for the sick and welcoming the stranger, that those are biblical.

But candidates like Tallarico have also tried to argue for abortion by saying God endorses it.

Also for transgenderism by saying that God is non-binary.

So Tallarico has tried to walk that back a little bit.

You know, a few establishment figures in evangelicalism have thrown some support to Tallarico.

New York Times columnist David French, for instance, he identifies as an evangelical and he wrote a column in which he called Tallarico one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.