For evangelical family, Bush's victory due to values, prayer

SHEFFIELD LAKE, Ohio -- On Redwood Drive, in the little house with the white picket fence, these first days after the election are good days, happy days, blessed days.

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''Dear Lord," Cary Leslie is saying for the sixth time since waking up at 3:45 a.m. to go to work. He has prayed for strength not to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock. He has prayed for a safe day for his wife and three children. He has prayed for patience with the sometimes foul-tempered customers he deals with at the car-rental counter. He has prayed for a job that will pay enough for a struggling family of five to keep up with the bills. He has prayed for a quick resolution to the presidential election. Now, with the election decided, he is thanking God.

Tara Leslie, his wife, has been praying for President Bush, too, and now she is saying, ''It's so important to have a society of moral absolutes."

''It's really good to know our country had a decision to make, and there are so many people who feel this way," Cary Leslie said. ''It's a victory for people like us."

The Leslies: They are George W. Bush votes come to life. The millions of voters who describe themselves as ''white evangelicals," 77 percent of whom voted for Bush? That's the Leslies. The voters who said ''moral values" mattered the most to them, 80 percent of whom voted for Bush? That's the Leslies, too.

They are precisely the people the Bush campaign built its reelection strategy on -- people who would put faith-based moral values above every other consideration when it came time to vote, including the war in Iraq, terrorism, the economy and, in the Leslies' case, a life that has been in financial peril since Sept. 11, 2001.

He is 29. She is 27. They have a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 6-month-old, and they are considering having one more. They oppose abortion, favor a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman, and want more Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They eat at home and shop at Wal-Mart. They homeschool their 5-year-old and are members of the nondenominational Church on the Rise, which is ''committed to helping families hold down the family fort in the 21st century," according to its literature. Its senior pastor said 90 percent of the 1,200 congregants voted for Bush.

''Religious kooks," Cary Leslie said, imagining how some people might think of them. His own description: ''We're pretty boring people. Normal people."

Normal people who, after the election, have found themselves increasingly happy about the state of America.

''We're definitely going to celebrate," Tara Leslie said of Bush's victory.   Continued...