How White Evangelical Women Are Saving Democracy

"In the one place where women still have the right to choose, you can do the right thing"

Nov 03, 2024

Welcome to the weekend edition of The Experiment, your official hopepunk newsletter. And a special thanks to Dan Siegel for helping make a vital connection to an ethnographer you’ll meet in a second. If you’d like to support my work, become a paid subscriber or check out the options below. But even if you don’t, this bugga free. Thanks for reading!

If you ask Dode Levenson how you should describe him, he’ll say, “Handsome.” A recovering journalist, he has credits as a writer on four features, including Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest. He’s directed and produced as well, but his first answer is the most revealing, a humbly joking admission that no one confuses him with Glen Powell and that he and Steven Spielberg aren’t up for the same projects. But Dode, pronounced DOH-dee, knows he’s enough for the task at hand, even if that task is something as monumental as saving democracy.

Saving democracy is pretty much what he and his friends in the entertainment industry have been talking about since Donald Trump got elected in 2016. Inside the news media and political industries, the temptation to normalize Trump was nearly irresistible. In Hollywood, a general freaking the hell out happened, and people stepped up. Rich people gave. Dode could tell stories, so when Richard Foos, the producer of films and TV shows including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Mystery Science Theater 3000, invited him to a meeting at the Shout Factory in West Los Angeles, Dode showed up.

“It became a mission.”

“At first I thought I was being pranked,” said Dode about the scene he found in Foos’ conference room. For one, Moby was there, as well we U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, along with various industry types. And then walks in the guy whom Foos called the meeting for, Doug Pagitt, a lanky fella standing 6’6” and wearing a porkpie hat. But once Pagitt started talking, Dode was sold. This is the smartest guy in the room, thought Dode.

No one in Washington was buying what Pagitt was selling, namely that part of the white evangelical vote was gettable for Democrats because Trump, though endorsed by evangelical preachers, embodied no traits that anyone could remotely call christlike: kindness, charity, mercy, etc. “I was surprised that was something that was movable because they had always voted MAGA before,” says Dode, who nevertheless was convinced. “It became a mission.”

That mission culminated recently with the much-talked-about web ad called Your Vote, Your Choice in which Julia Roberts, in a voice over, says, “In the one place in America where women still have the right to choose, you can vote any way you want.” Despite no one ever asking Dode to make this ad and exactly zero dollars behind it, the ad has gone old-school viral by occasioning the clutching of many pearls on Fox News and garnering coverage far afield from the political news media.

More importantly, it’s aimed squarely at the Nikki Haley voters who don’t plan to vote for Trump again and for whom the most persuasive critique of the Republican Party is that it “opposes abortion too much,” according to an October poll from Blueprint. These are some of the last undecided voters in America, and getting them to vote for Kamala Harris means convincing them to go against the wishes of their church, their neighbors, and, in most cases, their husband.

“In the one place in America where women still have the right to choose, you can vote any way you want.”

If you read this and feel like it’s is patronizing to these women, hold up: Evangelical wives are taught that submission to their husbands is godly and part of their faith. I grew up in an fundamentalist bible church and sat through several sermons about how wives should be subservient to their husbands. “Wives … submit yourselves to your own husbands,” begins First1 Peter 3:1. “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner.” There are millions of women who see the traditional wedding vow of obeying their husband as a blessing and not a curse.

Their obedience looks different to us, almost like coercion. Canvassers are providing ample anecdotal evidence of wives furtively confessing support for Kamala without letting their husbands know and husbands not allowing their wives to come to the door to talk. “I also had a phone banker who would come in once a week and make calls in the back room so no one would see her,” remembers Maggie Moore, who has run get-out-the-vote canvasses in North Carolina. “She didn’t want to get in trouble with anyone.”

“I had seen this dynamic play out in my life,” says ethnographer Gretchen Barton with the Worthy Strategy Group who, like me, grew up in and around evangelicalism. “What I had seen up close is there is a very strong culture in religious spaces that women occupy that a woman is supposed to defer to the guy. You’re told your feelings don’t matter, your emotions are leading you astray, and your husband will be your true north,” she says over the phone on a Sunday while her six-year-old son played adorably within earshot.

“Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner.” -First Peter 3:7

Gretchen, a Philadelphia-based mother of two, had a close relative who did not like Trump one bit but who voted for him twice because her husband told her to. Gretchen knew she couldn’t lecture or shame her relative into voting against Trump. But she knew there must be a way to reach her.

She needed what Gretchen calls a “permission structure,” like crossing a stream by safely stepping on large stones. You don’t need to tell her she’s an idiot for being on the wrong side or lecture her that water is wet. She might be an anti-abortion Republican evangelical, but she’s also an American woman with two eyes and two ears. They could see how the anti-abortion movement had gone from caring for babies to controlling women. “A lot of them were really bothered by it. They saw how women and girls were caught up in the meat grinder. It was just too much,” says Gretchen. “I knew that they needed a permission structure. We just need to tell them it’s OK because we see them.”

Pagitt and Vote Common Good, the progressive evangelical organization, had big plans to connect with these voters until the pandemic shut things down. In its place, Pagitt stood up weekly Zoom calls to keep the conversation going and invited Dode to join. Dode could see that everyone was “freaking out, running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” he says. “But that’s not doing anything.” He wanted to help the cause and was confident in his ability to tell a persuasive story if research pointed him in right direction. Dode knew there must be a way to reach those voters.

Pagitt also invited to the Zooms novelist and screen writer Gregg Hurwitz, who said, You know who really needs to be a part of this discussion? My friend Gretchen. Gretchen and Dode hit it off. The affection and admiration they share is obvious in conversation, his deflecting and eager to share credit, hers generous and insistent when it comes to Dode. To spend an hour in conversation with them should be classified as a Schedule I mood enhancer.

And like any great friendship, they shared the ideas that lit them up like showing each other the treasured keepsakes kids keep in shoeboxes under the bed. Dode talked about linguist George Lakoff’s idea of framing and how if you own the way a debate is framed, you’ve already won. She taught him about permission structures and how you didn’t need to—no that’s not right—how you couldn’t shame and lecture someone into agreeing with you.

These ideas—framing and permission structure—fit in a way that made them think they had discovered a way to get a chunk of the white evangelical vote, the largest and most loyal Republican base vote that constitutes a quarter of the entire electorate. It was kind of like discovering that the candy store left it’s backdoor unlocked at night. “I wanted to do something that had maximum impact, and the permission structure that Gretchen and I were talking about had always been paramount,” says Dode.

They just had one problem. Virtually no one entertained the possibility that this was true. The Democratic Party, like any U.S. political party interested in winning, is predicated on coalitions, and white evangelicals were to the GOP what Black voters were to Democrats. It wasn’t that the powers-that-wanted-to-be in the Democratic Party didn’t believe that Gretchen and Dode had found the answer but that they didn’t think there was a point to asking the question. These are white Republicans who oppose abortion. What’s the point?

These are white Republicans who oppose abortion. What’s the point?

Starting in the pandemic, Gretchen drew up a list of the 30 most important studies she thought needed to be done and began proposing them to donors. In Dec. 2021, she got a Christian funder to back her project, which she completed in March 2022. The results were clear: When you give evangelical women a permission structure that doesn’t ask them to betray their values, Democrats could get 5%-10% of the evangelical vote to go against Trump. That’s like flipping Florida.

She shared the results with Pagitt and Dode, who proposed the voting booth idea and raised money to create storyboards that he could take to donors to pay to produce the commercial. Normally, a media consultant has a client who commissions a commercial. In that way, the money drives the project, and in this way politics over-indexes on minimizing risk. Dode was running right at risk—white evangelicals, are you serious?—and had to fund this project like an independent movie or a tech start up. “The whole thing was on spec. No one would put a dime in,” says Dode. “I figured if you’re gonna bet on anyone, bet on yourself.”

After Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the ticket, Dode got a call from a tech entrepreneur in Austin whom he’s close to.

“I’m gonna give this money to the campaign unless you have a better idea,” said the entrepreneur.

“Hold on. I’ll give you one ad. It’ll be the bomb,” said Dode, who finally had enough in hand to commission the storyboards. Late one night, he emailed images of them to Gretchen to get her feedback. His phone rang minutes later.

“Hold on. I’ll give you one ad. It’ll be the bomb.”

“Oh my god, yes!” she yelled.

Oh good, he thought. I think I might have nailed it. He wasn’t out on the limb all alone. “Gretchen’s opinion means the world to me,” he says.

“I almost cried. I was so thrilled. I thought Dode just nailed it. It was so validating to see it,” she says.

The storyboards and study convinced Pagitt to allow Dode to work under Vote Common Good’s banner, and the tech donor was willing to put up matching funds to pay for the ad. “He basically took a flier on me,” says Dode, who took a leave from a film contract he had to focus on this unpaid project.

“There are lots of these ideas that aren’t invested in, third rail ideas. You have to have the outlook of a tech entrepreneur to see it,” says Gretchen. “Risk is really important in this world. Taking a risk on something new to get a different outcome is really important.”

Dode asked his friend Rob Cohen, who wrote for The Simpsons, The Wonder Years, The Ben Stiller Show, and The Big Bang Theory, to direct, but he couldn’t. Instead, Cohen suggested the Canadian brother/sister documentarians Megan Raney Aarons and Colin Keith Gray.

“There are lots of these ideas that aren’t invested in, third rail ideas. You have to have the outlook of a tech entrepreneur to see it.”

The last thing Dode thought he wanted were documentarians telling a story. Too preachy, he thought, but he trusted Cohen, and they were willing to do it for free. Plus, Meghan, who ended up directing, brought something else to the table, a 20-year-long friendship with Julia and Danny.

Also, Julia agreed to do the voice over on an ad that has already brought her a river of grief, including from Biggie Grievance himself. “I’m so disappointed at Julia Roberts,” said Trump on Fox News. “She’s going to look back on that and she’s going to cringe. ‘Did I really say that?’ It doesn’t say much for her relationship, but I’m sure she has a great relationship.”

Before shooting, Dode ran the script by his manager, Sheri Kelton of SRK Entertainment. When she called him back, she told him he couldn’t make it as written. The problem was an exchange that went to the heart of women needing to know that their vote is secret, even, if necessary, from their husband.

“Did you vote for him?” asks the husband.
“You bet I did, sweetie,” answers the wife.

“You cannot do it,” said Kelton.

“What do you mean?” said Dode.

“No, because you’re having a wife lie to her husband, and that is not going to play well,” she explained.

“That’s the whole joke! That’s the whole bit!”

“Find another way.”

“You’re having a wife lie to her husband, and that is not going to play.”

Dode didn’t want to be a wedge between husband and wife, and this goes to the heart of what he sees as being wrong with Democratic persuasion messaging writ large. Dode had no interest in lecturing to or shaming these women. He didn’t need to convince them he was right to get what he wanted. “I just want the vote, first of all. I don’t want to judge this couple,” he says. “The finger-wagging thing feels really, really good, but it doesn’t move the needle.”

He made a slight adjustment.

“Did you make the right choice?”
“You bet I did, honey.”

To Dode, it was more important to hone in on the privacy of voting because the privacy of women in America had been intruded upon in other, darker ways. This ad wasn’t about abortion, fascism, or Trump championing unchristian behaviors and values. This was all about privacy, namely the privacy of a white evangelical woman. “It was not an accident. It was by design,” says Dode.

Gretchen took the storyboards to Future Forward “for testing and a buy.” Let me explain. This was the equivalent of debuting your indie movie to Sundance, hoping that audiences filled with industry insiders will love it and compete to distribute. Future Forward is the super-PAC that tests how effective ads are and then pays a ton of money to get them in front of eye balls. Future Forward is to Democratic presidential commercials what Marvel Studios is to American cinema.

The ad tested well, moving 4.2% of swing voters to Kamala, but not as well as others. But it only tested in the 73 percentile, and Future Forward only funds ads that test 90% and above. Gretchen doesn’t bear them any ill will. Hers was a new idea going after a supposedly ungettable bloc of voters. And besides, she says, “They didn’t have the lived experience,” allowing for the fact that few Democratic insiders grew up in white evangelical circles.

“It didn’t look right on their stupid charts.”

“Somebody’s gotta make a gut call,” says Dode.

So, on Oct. 28, they uploaded it to YouTube.

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says at the top of the ad.

The ad, which Dode calls a conversation starter, has certainly gotten a lot of people talking, including Fox News’ Jesse Waters on a recent episode of The Five, who likened secretly voting for Kamala to infidelity.

“If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters told the rest of the panel. “That violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What is she lying about?”
“Why would she lie to you?” fellow panelist Jeanine Pirro asked.
“Why would she do that and vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting… If I caught her and she said ‘I lied to you for the last four years’,” he added.
“It’s over, Emma!” Watters said in a mocking tone. “That would be D-Day!”

“I cannot believe this guy,” says Gretchen. “He had an affair on his [first] wife and left her. I cannot with these guys.”

Taylor Tomlinson, a former evangelical herself who now hosts CBS’s late-night show After Midnight, calls “Your Vote, Your Choice” her favorite ad. “This is a film about a woman having an affair with democracy, Eat, pray, vote,” joked Tomlinson. “I love this ad. If you don’t, clearly you’ve never lived with a man you were scared of.”

In less than a week, the ad has racked up almost half a million views on YouTube alone and 150 million individual impressions across all social media platforms. That’s a bunch more than a similar, less-nuanced, and un-tested ad released by The Lincoln Project. More importantly, no one is arguing about the Lincoln Project ad. Gretchen sees the Vote Common Good ad and the ensuing discussion as a Rorschach test. Conservative men see a threat to invite matrimonial sculduggery. Some liberals scorn it as talking down to women for being supposedly unable to make their own decisions.

Gretchen see this differently. “I think this is a love letter to these women telling them that it’s OK to come over,” who understands that liberals might find the ad emotionally unsatisfying. “I think sometimes people want to have a clear villain. As researchers and human beings, our approach is to find out what is really going on and what they need,” says Gretchen, who thinks “Your Vote, Your Choice” humanizes the “women who are often lumped into ‘ugh, those women.’ I want women to be themselves and vote the way they want to.”

As it turns out, Dode and Gretchen found themselves not alone on the road less traveled. A grassroots movement to put stickie notes in women’s bathrooms reminding them that their ballots are secret has been going on for months. Who started this might be one of the best-kept secrets of 2024. In an industry where people are all-too-eager to grab credit and hand out blame, no one has come forward to claim this baby.

Galvanize Action, a liberal group focused on persuading moderate white women (and not necessarily evangelical), have been trending slowly toward the Democrats in recent years. In June when it was Biden and Trump, they were 41% to 41%. In August, they went 44% for Harris and 43% for Trump. And in September, they went 46% for Harris and 44% for Trump.

Their approach, backed by polling from Lake Research Partners, is to emphasize voting separately. What’s key is avoiding them voting together by mail. That, says Celinda Lake, tends to result in Republican votes because the woman assumes she doesn’t know as much as her partner. “She’s intimidated that he’s got more information,” she says.

What she recommends is never making it seem like men making decisions was worse, just different. In fact, women make lots of serious, consequential decisions for their families all the time, often about health care and the education of their children. Politics is no different and no less important. Women need to know, argues Lake, they are not just voting for themselves but voting for their family, and the values they want for them.

“This is a film about a woman having an affair with democracy, Eat, pray, vote.”

That research led to Galvanize’s “Bartender,” which tells the story of a woman who hears a lot of opinions all day long but makes up her own mind in the voting booth. It’s probable you have never heard of it. The ad is unobjectionable and tests well, reportedly moving their target voters by 5%. But it has been on YouTube for two months. It might cross 1,000 views by Election Day, but they make a good point with the best interests of women in mind, and that ain’t nothing.

Lake says the exit polls might not detect these votes for Kamala as coming from Republican women because since voting for Haley in the primary they are self-identifying as independent voters. “It’s been evolving post Dobbs. We saw a surge of them,” says Lake.

Cate Gormley, a vice president at Lake Research, has picked up a new signal that all these efforts are working. “I’ve been told by several Republican pollsters that for the first time they are campaigning to keep college-educated men from voting the same as their wives,” she says.

“Somethings that are lightning in a bottle.”

It’s likely we’ll be talking about all these ads if Kamala wins white women for the first time since god knows how long, and a lot of attention will get focused on the one that caused the most squealing. “Your Vote, Your Choice” leverages abortion to win over these anti-Trump women by focusing on privacy, which is something no one would ever say is the best way to win over white evangelical women. It wouldn’t even make the top 10.

“Some things are lightning in a bottle. There are some things that are hard to test,” says Gretchen. “What means the most to me is that Dode took a leap of faith with a population that had kinda been written off.”

Sadly, the ad came too late to sway her anti-Trump Trump-voting relative. By the time they posted the ad, she’d already cast her ballot. “The woman I made the ad for, she ended up voting for Trump,” said Gretchen. “Maybe the ad will help for other women.”

Jason Stanford is a co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Follow him on Threads at @jasonstanford, or email him at jason31170@gmail.com.