Harlem Unlikely To Swing New York Into The GOP Column... At Least Not This Year

The Romney camp is scrambling for a few votes in a few swing states-- even African American votes. Nationally, Romney polls around 6% with African Americans. But in places where science and intelligence are belittled and reality is shunned in favor of Bronze Age fairy tales, Romney is finding some reason for hope. Last week, for example, it was reported that Obama is losing African American voters in pivotal North Carolina and that Romney is picking up as many as 20% there-- a very key battleground state that could decide the election. (McCain only won 5% of the black vote in North Carolina in 2008.) The swing against Obama came after he endorsed the idea of equality for LGBT families but there are deranged-- and heavily bribed-- preachers, many of them repressed homosexuals themselves, who are screaming their homophobic nonsense to ignorant congregations. And ignorant congregations are as much a part of the Romney coalition as Wall Street boardrooms.

The Mormons are frothing at the mouth to capture the White House and it's no secret that over 80% of Mormons are on the Romney bandwagon. You probably heard how Romney is counting on a Mormon army to win him the White House on election day. You might not read about it in any American newspapers but the conservative U.K. Financial Times covered it last week. Mormons are approaching campaigning for Romney the same way they approach proselytizing their religion among the Gentiles.

Wally Harkness is something of a walking billboard for Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential hopeful. Whenever he is on the road-- which, as a sales manager for a Utah energy company, is often-- he puts on his Romney T-shirt and spreads the Romney word.

“Wherever I am-- Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona-- I wear my Romney T-shirt,” says Mr Harkness, a 48-year-old father of five from Orem, just south of Salt Lake City.

“I’m not the least bit shy about walking around in my shirt and answering questions. Just the other day in Denver airport, I was talking to some students and got their minds thinking about the election.”

While at home in Utah, Mr Harkness spends evenings and Saturday mornings at Mr Romney’s state headquarters in a deserted shopping complex in Orem, making calls into battleground states as far afield as Michigan and Iowa.

Mr Harkness’ enthusiasm is not unusual in Utah, where Mr Romney enjoys a 90 per cent approval rating. Though the state is solidly Republican, part of the special zeal or Mr Romney here is due to the fact that he shares a religion-- Mormonism-- with as many as 70 per cent of the state’s residents.

The Romney campaign is planning to harness this energy by deploying an army of Utah supporters, like Mr Harkness, to states where the presidential race is close, such as neighbouring Nevada and Colorado. Such efforts could be crucial in battleground states that will decide the election.

Next week, the state’s Republican National Committee will send its first busloads of members-- as many as 180-- to the Romney campaign “victory centre” in Mesquite, Nevada, to talk about their ground-game for winning the state.

In addition to hitting the neighbouring states, the Romney campaign and the RNC are also planning to use the energised Utahns to put “boots on the ground” further afield in places such as California and Idaho too.

“This is going to be so exciting,” says Thomas Wright, the ebullient chairman of the state’s Republican National Committee. “We are going to be able to take all these Utahns, who are so passionate about Mitt Romney, to the battleground states to our west and to our east.”

Much has been made of Barack Obama’s extensive grassroots network that helped propel him to the presidency in 2008, either by donating small sums online or getting out to spread his message of hope and change. But Mr Romney’s Mormon army could act as a counterweight to the president’s ground game in close races.

The missionary work that is at the heart of the Mormon religion-- 1 million have left home for two years to convert others to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-- could be good preparation for a Romney door-knocking and phone-calling outreach effort, given the long hours and rejection that such endeavours often entail.

Mr Romney himself spent two years as a missionary in France, during which time he reportedly converted six people to the faith. He attended Utah’s Brigham Young University, a Mormon college, as an undergraduate and returned in 1999 to rescue the flailing Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, an appointment made partly because of his links to the church. The former Bain Capital executive not only turned around the Olympics, but he turned it into one of the most successful winter games ever.

In Mr Romney’s Orem campaign headquarters, rows of computers and telephones sit in grey cubicles ready for volunteers like Mr Harkness. Above each is a picture of Mr Romney working the phones, with the caption “calls = votes."

In Harlem, on the other hand, the presence of a bunch of Mormons probably isn't going to do Romney much good. Residents there are angry that the Mormons are selling property to predatory developers who push middle-class residents out for wealthier (whiter) newcomers. Mormon gentrification of Harlem is going badly. The Mormon problem in Harlem starts with a crumbling, windowless, one-story building on 129th Street between Lenox Avenue/Malcolm X Boulevard and Fifth Avenue, and the grassy vacant lot beside it.

Harlem’s first Mormon congregation met in the building before moving in 2005 to a larger, newly built church around the corner at 128th Street and Lenox. The congregation and some of its non-Mormon neighbors still use the windblown lot to grow vegetables, train Cub Scouts and host family barbecues.

Now, though, church officials in Utah have decided to sell the property to a residential developer. They rejected two proposals that would have kept the garden and housed community services next door-- one proposal from a neighborhood nonprofit organization and another from members of the Harlem congregation.

Suddenly, the unprepossessing property represents much more.

...Neighbors who enjoy good relations with the church fear a rare chunk of open space will be lost to the gentrification that has washed across Harlem over the past decade, improving community life in some ways and threatening it in others.

“It’s a disappointment,” said Rachel Tew, who has lived on the block for decades and is a member of a Harlem land trust that tried to persuade the church to give it the land or sell at a discount. “The more condos you build, the more expensive it becomes for the little guy like me.”

Ms. Tew, who is not a church member, holds a key to the church garden and coordinates with members to open it for neighbors’ parties. Such events, she says, bring back former residents who fled poverty and drug dealing and show them how things have improved. She also grows vegetables there.

“Tomatoes, cucumbers, red, yellow and green peppers, thyme,” she said, a little wistfully. “Rosemary. Lettuce. I grew a lot of herbs, purple basil. Different things.”

All this comes at a time of increased attention to Mormons. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is a Mormon. And New York subways are plastered with “I’m a Mormon” advertisements featuring Mormons of color-- some from the Harlem congregation-- that display the religion’s growing diversity.

...Wayne Collier, a Harlem congregation member, said the church was missing an opportunity. He said he and others had proposed turning the land into a “welfare center,” with a cannery, storehouse and employment center-- all institutions the church currently has scattered from Inwood to New Jersey. He said his proposal was to keep the garden and build the center next door, with rental apartments above it to finance that project and others.

“We think there’s a way to meet local needs, serve the community and still make enough money that we can continue to serve those global needs,” he said. “It seems like they missed a chance to hold onto property that they would have a hard time getting back.”

With the recession challenging charitable institutions from the sprawling Mormon church to tiny Harlem nonprofit groups, the stakes end up being high. But beyond that, the 129th Street property has a symbolic and sentimental value to local residents.

The congregation met for a time in Sylvia’s restaurant, where Polly Dickey, who calls herself “one of the originals,” disliked seeing empty liquor bottles (Mormons shun alcohol and coffee). The church bought the one-story windowless building from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Family nights and square dances transformed the bare-bones building into a “family atmosphere,” Ms. Dickey recalled.

...Adjoining the garden are two properties owned by Ms. Tew’s organization, the Rev. Linnette C. Williamson Memorial Park Association, the trust that sought to buy the church land at a discount. One, a grassy lawn, is used as a play space by local day care centers; the other is a community garden.

Paul Coppa, a lawyer for the trust, said that church officials in Utah had no interest in his proposal and that while he believed he could have made a deal with the local congregation, he was told they had “no say.”

The church declined to discuss the sale price, but similar lots have sold for more than $1 million.

The developer in contract to buy the property, Yoni Bak of Kane Ventures, said his company strove to preserve local character. He declined to specify his plans; his Web site shows an image of a six-story “luxury” condominium building his company is constructing two blocks away.