Lela Pittenger Says Senate Run Divinely Inspired

10 November 2011

By Cindy Mallette | ResonateNews.com

AUSTIN, Texas — A debtor nation. State and local governments in bankruptcy. Culture wars. The threat of terrorism, financial ruin, poverty, hunger and desperation. In dark times, does God call upon his children to lead?

Literally call them?

Enter Lela Pittenger, a new mother from Dripping Springs, Texas. Pittenger, 32, is a full-time caretaker for her husband's aging grandmother. She says God “told her” to run for the U.S. Senate.

Pittenger acknowledges how out-of-place it seems that someone like her is running for the Republican nomination for departing Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's seat. With no money and no political pedigree it seems unlikely, she said, that God would appoint someone like her to help change the culture of Washington, D.C., and lead the nation out of a dark crisis.

But here she is, polling higher than many more well-known, well-financed politicos in this 12-person race.

TEXAS ROOTS

“I did not grow up talking about politics,” Pittenger said. “We did not talk about it at home. I did not know how my parents voted, or whether they voted. It was not a part of our daily lives.”

She describes her family as salt-of-the-earth people. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked at a feed yard in the Texas Panhandle.

“When I was 12 years old, I remember Dad taking me to the feed yard, and I would do office work. Of course, he didn't want me out on the yard with those cowboys,” she said, laughing.

Her parents raised her and her three brothers to love Jesus Christ and made sure they always attended church.

“Mom was Catholic, but she worked a lot of nights and weekends, so we would go to a lot of different churches growing up — non-denominational, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian,” Pittenger said. “Seriously, I think I've been to them all.”

Pittenger voted for the first time while attending Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where she earned a degree in English. She had an aunt who lived in town and was active in Concerned Women for America. Her aunt would talk to her about the latest political happenings, which piqued her interest.

That was the extent of Pittenger's political engagement. At election time, she educated herself about the issues and candidates, and she voted. In the meantime, she earned a master's degree from Southern Methodist University in dispute resolution. When she and her husband, Greg, got word that his grandmother had suffered a stroke, they took his grandmother's home with them to Dripping Springs to take care of her.

Pittenger said that in January 2008, God began to open doors in her life that no person could shut.

“My husband and I, we love to do our New Year's resolutions. I like to put them on a spreadsheet and break them down by month,” she said. She laughed at this idiosyncrasy, but points out that most people never accomplish their New Year's goals.

“I wanted to do them, so I had this spreadsheet, and I had them all broken down by month — things like learn how to sew, and get better in Spanish, because I love languages.”

While she was filling out the spread sheet, she was praying.

“I asked God, 'How do you want to work in me this year?' and I felt like He said, 'I want you to get involved in politics.'”

“I was like, 'Well I don't know how to do that, but I'll try.'”

In one corner of the spreadsheet, in a cell far away from the rest of the resolutions, Pittenger wrote “politics.”

Over the course of the next year, Pittenger said God would propel her into the political field much farther than she'd ever dreamed.

2008: RESOLUTION YEAR

Her first step was to learn how to be involved. She took a class offered by Concerned Women for America that taught the very basics — things such as how to look up a bill, how to communicate with your congressman, how to testify at a committee hearing and how to attend your party's precinct convention.

“I thought, 'Okay, I learned what I need to do,'” she said.

“I thought to myself, 'Wait a minute. This can't be right. This can't be from God. I don't deserve this — I haven't earned it. Other people should be going.'”
— Lela Pittenger

The precinct convention was in March, and the party leaders were looking for volunteers to attend the county convention in a few weeks.

“I just kind of checked with God, and I was like, 'What do I do?'” Pittenger said. “He said, 'Put your name in,' and so I did.”

She was accepted as a delegate to the Hays County convention and was caught by surprise at how contentious the meeting turned out to be.

“There was a lot of fighting on the floor between the long-term Republicans and the people who'd come in because of Ron Paul,” she said. “You know, he's brought in such a variety of people into the party.”

After a long day of intense debate over platforms and issues, it came time to choose delegates to the state convention.

“I was saying, 'What do I do?' and the lord said, 'Put your name in.' I was like, 'Wait a minute — this is for people who've earned it.' But the Lord said, 'Put your name in.' So I said, 'OK,'” Pittenger said.

She put her name in the running with 50 other people for 14 delegate positions for the state convention.

At the end of the day, she was one of the 14 selected.

“I went to collect the information about it and as I'm walking by, this fabulous woman in her 80s with flaming red hair grabs me and said, 'I want to talk to you.'”

I knelt down next to her and she said, 'Why are you getting involved?' I said, 'Well, ma'am, I believe God called me to be involved.' She said, 'Oh, I'm so glad to hear that, because when I was helping pick out names of people to go to the state convention, the lord highlighted your name to me, and I didn't know why.'”

Pittenger thought the state convention in Houston in 2008 would be the end of her political involvement. But God had other plans.

“On the last day we were supposed to pick our national convention delegates. So the morning of, I set my alarm for 7 a.m. The lord woke me up at 5 a.m. and said, 'Put your name in,'” Pittenger said. “I thought to myself, 'Wait a minute. This can't be right. This can't be from God. I don't deserve this — I haven't earned it. Other people should be going.'”

She prayed and wrestled with the decision for two hours, but God, she said, was firm.

Pittenger added her name as a candidate for the very last alternate delegate spot. Most of the other candidates had come prepared, wearing suits, with polished resumes in-hand and ready to give a three-minute speech before the whole convention on why they should be chosen.

“I had nothing. I am wearing a denim skirt and black flip-flop sandals and a black shirt. I looked completely out-of-place,” Pittenger said.

When it came time for her to give her speech, she said she spoke the words God had given her in prayer that morning.

“I just talked about how I've lived all over the state,” she said. “I've actually lived in eight different cities and towns in Texas, so I know the state very well. I talked about how I get it — I have family in agriculture, so I get it. I have family in law enforcement, so I get it what's happening with immigration. I went to three different public high schools in four years, so I get it about public education. And I talked about how I've been a caregiver for all the last couple of years, how I knew what the government was going to do to our senior citizens, and I was seriously worried about it.”

She got a standing ovation when she was done.

“I gave my speech and all these people were excited. When it was time to vote, people would come over to me and say, 'I've gone through what you're going through. I identify with what you're saying. I thank you.' People just really related to what the Lord told me to say,” she said.

The final vote for who would go as the third alternate delegate came down to a tie between Pittenger and a man that one of the major anti-abortion groups had endorsed. After a runoff, Pittenger won by four votes.

“Everyone's leaving, and the last person in the room is the guy who I beat,” she said. “He comes over to me and says, 'I want you to know you're an answer to prayer.' He said, 'I didn't want to go to the convention, but they couldn't find anyone else. I'd been praying that the Lord would send a pro-life person in my place.'”

“I voted for Sarah Palin at the convention that year, and I went home,” she said. “When I got home, a lot of the people who'd seen me in action in my county wanted to know if I'd think about running for office. They asked me to run for all kinds of local offices and state offices. Every time I prayed about it, the Lord said, 'No.'”

Surely, she thought, the national convention was the end of her political involvement.

“IF EVER THERE WAS A TIME YOU COULD WIN ...”

After the convention and the 2008 elections were over, Pittenger went back to taking care of her husband and his grandmother. Then in early 2009, she said she felt God urging her to pray for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

“I could only imagine how difficult her life is,” she said. “She's put in so many years in public service, and people treat you terribly. People who've never met you hate your guts. So I prayed a lot for her, for her husband and her children. The longer I was praying about it, the more I felt the lord was telling me to step up.”

Pittenger began to sense God was calling her to run for the U.S. Senate. But that was something she simply could not believe — not at first. She wrestled with what she believed God was telling her for a long time.

“I searched the Bible, and the trouble with the Bible is, you can find anything you want in the Bible,” she said. “You can find people saying, 'You're too young,' and you can find people saying the young need to step up.”

But the more she prayed about it, the more clear it seemed that this is what God wanted her to do. She decided to talk with a pastor who was coming to her town, Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, Calif.

“Bill is a fifth-generation preacher and has been in ministry his whole life,” Pittenger said. “Bill's a very, very nice man. I've heard him speak at other places, and I thought, maybe he could tell me if this is God or not, because I don't know. I talked to other pastors, and they were like, 'I don't know how to tell you how to hear from God.' And that's really disappointing.”

But the clarity she hoped to find in Redding would prove elusive.

“He delivered a great sermon, but as soon as it was over, I went to go find him and he was gone,” she said. “I couldn't find him anywhere. So I went to some of his ministry team, and I was in tears. I said, 'Look, I need help — I don't know what to do. I'm confused. I think God's calling me to do something big and I don't know whether or not it's God.'”

When she told them that the “big” thing was running for the Senate, they said they didn't have an answer but would pray with her about it.

In the summer of 2009, Hutchison announced that she would be retiring from her senate seat in March 2010 to run for governor of Texas. Pittenger asked God if it was time to act. She said to her great surprise, he said no.

“He was like, 'No, just wait. Just wait. But of course, he knew better because [Hutchison] wasn't going to step down after all,” she said.

Now, instead of cobbling together a last-minute campaign destined for a March 2010 primary, Pittenger had time to properly prepare for her run. Her first order of business was to consult her politically-connected aunt in Sherman, Texas, and ask for her advice and support in the race. Her aunt set up a series of meetings with political friends in the North Texas area.

“The very first person I met with said to me, 'I don't believe you can hear God's voice, and I think you need to wait your turn.' I thought, 'Okay … this is not a good start.'”

But she was not deterred.

The second and third meetings were much more successful. The individuals gave the same answer when Pittenger asked if she should run: “If ever there was a time you could win, this is it.”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CANDIDATE

After what she perceived to be many confirmations that this was the direction God wanted her to go, Pittenger entered the race. The only problem is, as a full-time caretaker and brand new mother, Pittenger has no campaign war chest with which to run this race. She also has no staff.

“It's just me, my husband and God,” she says.

“I have to do all my own reading. I have to do all my own research. I've gotta come up with my own conclusions,” she said. “That's why people say, 'You sound like you're speaking from your heart.' Well that's because I've done all the work myself. It's not someone feeding me talking points. It is me, from study and prayer.”

To a seasoned campaign pro, this type of campaign — with no money and no staff — would seem hopeless.

“I always think it's interesting that the politicos say this is a $10 million to $20 million race. The people who are saying it costs that much are the people who are making money on the race. They need it to be expensive because they make money through ad buys, through consulting fees,” she said. “Everybody in politics thinks they're an expert. But I'll be the first to say God is the expert. He's the one who called me in, he's the one who's gotten me this far. I have spent literally one-tenth or one-one hundredth of what some of these candidates have spent, and I still have this much buzz about me across the state.”

In a series of Tea Party-sponsored Senate candidate forums across the state, Pittenger has edged closer and closer to the front of the pack. She's been invited to speak at hundreds of conservative and Republican club meetings across the state. Her goal is to speak in every county in Texas.

While at times, generating this buzz has been rigorous, Pittenger said that each time she's put her faith in the Christ and let him provide the opportunities for her to reach more people, he's come through in astonishing ways. Most recently, she said he opened up an opportunity for Pittenger to address thousands of Texans on Nov. 6 in Houston. She gave a speech at the Lincoln-Douglas debate hosted by the Texas Tea Party Patriots PAC right before Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich went head-to-head on the issues.

Pittenger points out another way her candidacy is unique — not a single person in the Senate is under age 40. This fact causes her great concern, she said.

“My generation does not have time to wait and see if these guys are gonna get it right,” she said. “I know that the enemy is going to get people of my generation to stand up with anger and bitterness, and I want to go forward with the love of Christ and with healing.”

ON THE ISSUES

On her campaign site, Pittenger gives her take on a number of issues that are front-and-center in American politics — such as support of the U.S. Constitution, of limited government growth and spending, of individual and state's rights, and of the right to life.
In fact, the abortion issue is one of the most important to her. If elected, she would be one of only two anti-abortion women in the Senate.

“The feminist groups tear our men down. They say you can't tell women what to do with their bodies,” she said. “I'm a woman who had a baby without health insurance, but God has totally provided every step of the way. I don't agree with murdering a child. I think it's wrong. Our government says we can't put raw milk in our bodies, but we can abort a child that's growing in our bodies. That's totally backwards to me.”

Fighting child pornography is another issue of great importance to her.

“Every year since the internet went public, child pornography has increased tenfold over the previous year. People are usually shocked when I tell them that number because we are so focused on our pocketbooks that we don't realize our children are being victimized at an incredible rate,” she said.

She says Christians do the country a disservice by not being more involved in public policy. However, she warns that legislating morality is not the way to go, either.

“The church is demanding that the federal government make moral decisions. And then they're outraged when we have a man who completely disagrees with our views, but the church has demanded that the government take over that role, instead of the church leading the way,” she said. “It's about one-on-one relationships. But instead, we expect that if we pay our tax dollars, then our government should solve those problems for us.”

Pittenger draws no distinction between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism and urges people to stop dividing the two.

“If you are a social conservative, this economy is extremely important to you because finances are the No. 1 reason for divorce. Finances are the No. 1 reason for abortions. If people feel like they don't make enough money, they don't get married, they don't have children, they drink more, they do drugs more. If you're a fiscal conservative, then social issues are very important to you. If people don't have children, then we won't have enough people to pay for Social Security or Medicare. Our generation is having so few children that we're not going to be able to support the system that we have created.”

She urges Christians to remember Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

“I feel like the lord's heart is very hurt about what's happening. But nothing will change if the leaders keep ignoring his voice when he calls them to step up. I think there are a lot of believers ignoring his voice,” she said.

“I don't understand how we're going to change this game if we keep on playing it the same way,” she added. “We can change the rules on how politics work.”