DON'T BE THE LAST ONE IN YOUR CHURCH TO VOTE YOUR VALUES:

Black Christians boosted Bush (Gregory Lewis, John Maines and Alva James-Johnson, November 12, 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Drawn by issues of family values, many black conservative Christian voters joined their white brethren in the faith at the polls to return George W. Bush to the White House, political analysts said.

"Bush's vote is going up among black voters, especially among black conservative Christians," said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based black think tank.

Mary Ellen Richards, 58, a Haitian-American retiree, has been a U.S. citizen for 40 years and voted by absentee ballot from Haiti.

"I was a Democrat before, but I'm not satisfied with the policy of the Democrats and so I'm voting for Bush," Richards said.

Although blacks overwhelmingly voted for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Bush made considerable inroads.

Even in South Florida, the state's Democratic stronghold, Bush garnered more of the black vote than he did in 2000, when he received 4 percent. This year, he gained 3 percentage points in Broward and improved his black support slightly in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.

Palm Beach County Commissioner Addie Green, a Democrat, said the Republican strategy of aligning with black churches was effective.

"Bush didn't take the county, but he went to the heart of the black community, our churches, with his faith-based initiatives, [and] got some of them to vote for him," she said.