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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is hoping to become the next President of the United States.

To become the Republican nominee, Ron DeSantis knows who he needs to win over: Religious Americans who oppose things like abortion and gay rights.

He’s called upon an unlikely figure for help - an Australian preacher known for his outspoken conservative views.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper, Elle Hardy, on how a guy from rural Victoria has become a feature of the Republican race to the White House.

It’s Tuesday, October 3rd.

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ANGE:

So Elle, Ron DeSantis is the Governor of Florida. He's hoping to be the Republican nominee for president. Can you tell me about his campaign and what his chances are against Trump?

ELLE:

He's running, in many senses to the right of President Trump. He's really, really going hard on on social issues, on so-called wokeness.

Audio excerpt – Ron DeSantis:

“It is inappropriate for a teacher to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body or that their gender is a choice.”

ELLE:

On anti-gay, anti queer, anti Disney…

Audio excerpt – Ron DeSantis:

“A lot of these Republicans are siding with Disney and they're attacking me. And here's what I will say. We oppose the sexualisation of children.”

ELLE:

Anti anyone who who he charges is a rabid liberal.

Audio excerpt – Ron DeSantis:

“We will do battle with anybody who seeks to rob our children of their innocence. And on those principles, there will be no compromise. We will fight the woke corporations.”

ELLE:

Look, it's never been in doubt that he clearly doesn't have anything in common with middle America, doesn't really have courage and doesn't have any convictions either. He's just a complete void of charisma and he is really, really struggling in this campaign, particularly having made an enemy of President Trump.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“We are leading DeSanctimonious by massive numbers. He's he's heading south quickly. No personality. You've got to have a personality to win. He's got no personality.”

ELLE:

And right now, he's looking for all the help that he can get.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“He was dying, as the expression goes. He was a he was dead. I said, George Washington could endorse you. It wouldn't matter. No, sir.”

ANGE:

And Ron de Santis is trying really hard to be a competitor against Trump but he can't get there alone. Where is he looking to for that help, how has he launched his campaign?

ELLE:

So it was at an evangelical megachurch in suburban Iowa, which is fairly common. Iowa is the first state that has a Republican presidential primary. So candidates spend a disproportionate amount of time in the state of Iowa, which is in the Midwest. It's a farming state. It's reliably Republican. And leaders want to go there and make a good impression.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“I want to say thank you to each and every one of you for coming out here to welcome Florida Governor Ron DeSantis back to our great state.”

ELLE:

There's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of media to be gained from either winning the state or just even doing very well or surprising people in that state. So holding his campaign launch at an evangelical church wasn't unusual. But what was unusual was the man who introduced him to the congregation.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“Thank you. And give a warm round of applause to Pastor Jesse Newman as he comes up to lead us in prayer.”

ELLE:

And that's an Australian pastor called Jesse Newman.

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“All right. Some people in here still believe that America's greatest days are still ahead of her? Amen. Come on. Let’s pray together.”

ELLE:

He's a 40 year old Australian guy who grew up in rural Victoria and he had a pretty rough upbringing. His paternal grandparents converted to Pentecostal Christianity when he was about ten years old and most of the rest of the family followed suit. So he went to Bible College in Adelaide at what's now called Influencer's Church, and was just sort of drifting around the junior pastor scene. He was invited over by someone in Iowa to a conference at their church and spoke and just seemed to gel and vibe with some of the people there. And he came home to his wife, Laura, and their then two children, and he said, let's go over there and take over this small church that, they needed a new pastor. There was about 30 people at the church. It was broke. You know, the congregation was ageing. And ever since that moment about ten years ago, he has felt a renewed faith. And as I came to discover a real renewed sense of purpose and politics in life.

ANGE:

So you spoke to Jesse Newman. What was he like as a person and what was your conversation with him like?

ELLE:

He's a he's a really affable guy.

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“G’day Elle.”

Audio excerpt – Elle Hardy:

“Hey how’s it going?”

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“Going good, how are ya?”

Audio excerpt – Elle Hardy:

“Yes, good thanks.”

ELLE:

He's very talkative. He's very humble.

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“I’ve got my voice and I’m not sick so I can make more sense for ya.”

ELLE:

He's got the visible tattoos on his arms. He's got the trendy stubble. He wears baseball caps. He has a very broad Australian accent that is sort of he tempered a little sometimes in his sermons hmm, but on the phone, he's he's a he's a country Australian boy.

Audio excerpt – Elle Hardy:

“What was the other place, was it Mooroopana?”

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“Mooroopna. You’re clearly not from rural uh…”

ELLE:

He has love ya heaps written on the bottom of his letterhead. I heard a recent sermon that he gave talking about God and Abraham's faith in Genesis paraphrasing God and Abraham's conversation.

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“They’re like, bro you have one illegitimate child. You're not the father of many. What are you talking about, bro? Right. Like it's more than enough time to make a fool of yourself and for Abraham. I imagine it has enough time…”

ELLE:

What I think he's done really well in Iowa is that he has played very well into being an outsider, and it's pretty easy to see why he's built quite a successful congregation.

But he has this social media persona that seems quite a distance from the man that I certainly spoke to. His social media persona is is very brash. It's very political.

Audio excerpt – Jesse Newman:

“Wouldn't talk about homosexuality, wouldn't talk about abortion, wouldn't talk about about how we vote, wouldn't talk about anything that might be deemed a little bit controversial. Right. Because I had a timid faith. And it was amazing the ungodly things people would either do around me or talk about around me.”

ELLE:

He sort of speaks a bit to your typical American evangelical issues, abortion, gun rights, those sorts of things. But certainly it really seems that gay rights are attracting the most of his attention.

ANGE:

And Elle how much of his political messaging is cutting through with the congregation.... Are his church goers actually being influenced by what he’s saying?

ELLE:

He's clearly speaking to something. I think maybe, you know, if people don't necessarily agree with his politics or if they may be more in the can for Trump than Ron DeSantis. I think he's built a real persona of this everyman who's just calling it how he sees it. And I think he's he’s probably garnering some respect from people in that regard. But certainly he is preaching to the choir. It's a fairly God-fearing part of the country.

Churches used to have to appeal to the average person on the street, because if you're preaching a very extreme kind of politics or an extreme version of faith, people could vote with their feet and go to another church down the road. Nowadays, so many of these church services are televised, and that was really accelerated by the pandemic, by lockdowns. So you don't have to be in the same city as the church leader that you happen to like.

And something that that church leaders in the United States and around the world are discovering is that it can help having a niche. If everyone can can tune in to your church, if they can buy your merch, your self-help courses, whatever. It makes a lot of sense to have a really strong personality and to have very, very strong beliefs.

ANGE:

After the break - Why people like Jesse Newman hold so much influence over US politics.

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ANGE:

So Elle, in order to beat Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis is trying to court the evangelical vote. Right. How is he doing that and why is that winning over people like Jesse Newman?

ELLE:

I think that the appeal of Newman to Ron DeSantis’ campaign is that he’s a newcomer, he’s an insurgent, he's coming up against the old order which were all of those things that really appealed in Donald Trump. And by standing DeSantis next to Newman, they're trying to have Newman's sort of glory reflect back onto him.

Audio excerpt – Ron DeSantis:

“I want to thank Pastor Newman for hosting us here at Eternity Church. Thank you so much.”

ELLE:

So evangelicals are a huge voting bloc in the United States, and about a quarter of the population identifies as evangelical. So winning over evangelical leaders is something that a successful Republican candidate has to do.

For some, the endless scandals with Trump have become distasteful, and people like Newman see Ron DeSantis as a guy who can give them all of the policies they want and all this stuff that they really believe in with a bit more competence and a bit less drama.

Audio excerpt – Journalist:

“If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were re-elected, would you sign it?”

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“Are you talking about a complete ban?”

ELLE:

Trump was refusing to really go in hard on abortion, on complete national abortion bans.

Audio excerpt – Journalist:

“Would you sign that?”

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate with something and we’d end up with peace on this issue. For the first time in 52 years. I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean, DeSanctis is…”

ELLE:

And that is something that DeSantis seems to be prepared to do.

Audio excerpt – Ron DeSantis:

“But I do think that almost all Americans agree, you know, at some point there should be protections. You wouldn’t wanna say that the day before birth…”

ELLE:

But for now, white evangelicals turn out in higher proportions than just about anyone. And white evangelicals are still really behind Donald Trump. And I think it would take something fairly seismic for them to move behind DeSantis completely.

ANGE:

And why is it that religious conservatives, you know, evangelicals in particular, do still favour Donald Trump so strongly?

ELLE:

Trump has shown that he's prepared to to speak to the issues that are most important to them. So it's things like moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”

ELLE:

It was sacking the Supreme Court for a generation so they can get whatever they want through.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“The justices that I'm going to appoint will be pro-life. They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment.”

ELLE:

And in many ways, having Trump unconstrained by their morality was a good thing. They just wanted someone who's going to get things done on their behalf. They don't necessarily want to see themselves in the mirror.

But there's also a lot in his style as well. The reason why Pentecostals, even before all the other evangelicals got behind Trump, was that he has the look and sound of a Pentecostal preacher. So it's very informal. It's about preaching from the gut. It's, you know, my feelings are more important than your than your so-called education. It's entertaining. It's putting on a show. You know, a number of people have pointed out that if you look at a Trump rally and then if you read the transcripts, the transcript doesn't make any sense.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“The windmills are driving them crazy. They're driving. They're driving the whales, I think, a little batty. And they're washing up on shore at levels never seen before.”

ELLE:

But he's really great at pulling along the crowd with him, at keeping people entertained. And I think he does have that that very strong retail political sense of this is what the people want. Give them, you know, give ‘em a sugar hit, give ‘em an early win, and they'll stay behind you. And to date that, by and large, they have.

ANGE:

And Elle, as these Republican candidates chase evangelical votes in turn, I guess they're willing to be influenced by people like Jesse Newman. What does that mean for the future of conservative politics in America?

ELLE:

The reason why evangelical leaders like Jesse Newman are so influential and why political leaders are often following their lead is because you know, they're seeing people come in day to day, they're understanding that they know their problems, which is why a lot of people joined evangelical churches to deal with issues of health and wealth, which is important to the United States. You know, people people go to these churches to, you know, for faith healing when they can't afford medical insurance. And it's just the sense of community and people helping each other out and to be frank, there isn't really anywhere else that anywhere else at a community level that is doing this.

So church leaders, particularly in the Pentecostal tradition, they often have incredible, almost political-like websites that, you know, they know data on who their people are and where they're coming from. And they've really seen before the rest of the conservative movement that it's becoming increasingly less white. Evangelical churches are always sort of associated with old conservative white blokes, whereas in fact, particularly in the Pentecostal wing of evangelical churches, they are becoming more and more diverse. Particularly Latino Americans are joining these churches and they’re really the changing face and we’re starting to see that now translate into the Republican party. So I think that these churches are really seen as the frontline of the conservative movement in the United States.

ANGE:

Elle, thanks so much for your time today.

ELLE:

Thank you for having me.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today -

Ralph Regenvanu, a member of parliament in Vanuatu has become the first Pacific politician to say a ‘No’ vote in the Voice referendum would damage Australia’s international reputation.

Regenvanu issued a statement on social media saying while he hoped for a ‘Yes’ vote, a ‘No’ vote would damage the perception of Australia in Vanuatu.

And…

A law professor who was violently arrested by police while observing a student protest has successfully beaten the police in court.

University of Sydney’s chair of law and social justice, Simon Rice, successfully sued New South Wales police for assault and battery, and for false imprisonment after he was violently shoved to the ground and arrested at the protest in 2020.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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