Feinstein focus on Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith backfired once. Biden backers are nervous

The future of abortion rights is likely to be at stake with President Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, and many will be watching California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to see if she reprises her focus on the conservative nominee’s Catholic beliefs in Senate confirmation hearings.

That line of questioning didn’t go well for Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee when Barrett was being considered for an appeals court seat in 2017. In questioning whether Barrett’s religious beliefs would shape her views on the constitutionality of abortion and other issues, Democrats came under attack from conservatives who accused them of being anti-Catholic.

Pursuing that angle again would be a mistake that could hurt Democrats in the election, just as polls show Catholic voters leaving Trump for Joe Biden, said Doug Pagitt, an evangelical Christian pastor who supports the Democratic challenger.

“That is the only thing that I worry about over the next 30 days — that Democrats are going to come across as afraid of religious people or that they don’t like religious people,” said Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, a 2-year-old organization trying to convince Catholics and evangelicals to vote for Biden.

“Anything that could be interpreted toward casting aspersions on someone because of their religion could be a real misstep because it could be construed as religious bigotry,” said Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, an independent polling firm.

“And that could be used to political advantage for Trump,” Jones said.

The issue is on the radar because of what happened during Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing three years ago, after Trump nominated her to serve on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Feinstein and several other Democrats pressed Barrett, then a law professor at Notre Dame University, about her legal writings, in particular a 1998 law review article in which she explored what Catholic judges should do when deciding death penalty cases.

Barrett wrote that “judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s standard.”

Democrats also questioned Barrett about a speech in which she told Notre Dame law school graduates that “your legal career is but a means to an end, and … that end is building the kingdom of God.”

And they questioned why she had joined other academics in signing public letters to Catholic leaders affirming the church’s belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Barrett replied that she would follow precedent when it came to legal questions involving same sex marriage.

Feinstein, the lead Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told Barrett in 2017 that “dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Many conservatives took offense, particularly at Feinstein’s use of the word “dogma,” Then-Judiciary Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accused Democrats of placing a “religious test” on the nominee. The conservative Judicial Watch Network created digital ads saying Feinstein and other Democrats were sending a message when it came to those seeking judgeships: “Catholics need not apply.”

Barrett said at the time that “ I would faithfully apply all Supreme Court precedent.”

In 2017, a Feinstein spokeswoman said that “Professor Barrett has argued that a judge’s faith should affect how they approach certain cases. Based on this, Sen. Feinstein questioned her about whether she could separate her personal views from the law, particularly regarding women’s reproductive rights.”

But conservatives haven’t forgotten. After word of Barrett’s nomination leaked Friday, one organization of social conservatives said Democrats were trying to “silence” her “because they hate her.”

“Democrats and the mainstream media think they can bully Amy Coney Barrett into silence or pressure President Trump into choosing another nominee — or abandoning his constitutional right to appoint a new justice altogether,” Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, a social conservative organization that has opposed same sex marriage and transgender rights, wrote in an email to supporters.

One aspect of Barrett’s faith that did not come up in 2017, but could this time, is her membership in a small Christian organization called People of Praise. Members of the group pledge a lifelong oath of loyalty to “love and service to fellow community members.” They are assigned to a personal adviser — referred to as a “head,” in the case of men, and until recently as a “handmaid” for a woman. The group now calls a female adviser a “woman leader.”

The reference to “handmaid” has inspired pro-choice protesters in recent years to wear the red cloak and white bonnet of the women depicted in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which later became a TV series.

The novel depicts a theocratic society where women known as handmaids are forced into child-bearing slavery. Even though Atwood has said that another Christian sect was the inspiration for her book, there will no doubt be red-cloaked protesters outside Barrett’s confirmation hearing, as there were during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 appearances before the Judiciary Committee.

Pagitt, the pastor supporting Biden, says Democrats need to be sensitive to Catholics’ sensibilities if they bring up Barrett’s religious beliefs.

The political danger to the Democratic Party would be one of timing — alienating Catholic voters during Barrett’s hearings could short-circuit their migration to Biden.

An August survey by Vote Common Good of 1,430 self-described evangelicals and Catholics voters in five battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida — showed an 11-point shift away from Trump over the past four years and toward Biden, a Catholic who attends Mass weekly and carries a rosary in his pocket. Trump, who identifies as Presbyterian, rarely goes to church.

The survey found that Biden is on track to narrowly beat Trump among Catholics in those states and cut into the president’s wide lead among evangelicals.

The survey, which was conducted by an independent firm and overseen by behaviorial experts and academic pollsters from University of Southern California and three other universities, found that voters weren’t leaving Trump because of any positions he was taking on issues, but because they found Biden to be more “virtuous.”

While abortion is likely to be a major issue in Barrett’s hearing, more than half of all Catholic voters support abortion rights, according to 2019 Pew Research poll. Catholic support has swung between Democrats and Republicans in presidential races over the past 20 years. Four years ago, they supported Trump, but that could change this year, said Jones, the Public Religion Research Institute CEO.

“Evangelicals are still solidly for Trump, but Catholics have been moving around a bit,” Jones said. “It’s unclear where it’s moving it here.”

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli