REPUBLICAN Senate hopeful Katherine Troia McFarland's declaration that she's not an evangelical Christian has prompted a major backlash from the state's leading evangelical organization.
"This will definitely come up during her campaign because I, for one, will bring it up," the Rev. Duane Motley, leader of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, told The Post.
"This will hurt her because probably the largest block of voters in the country are evangelical, and a significant number of them are in New York," said Motley, who described his group as the state's largest association of evangelical Christians, with 2,000 affiliated churches representing more than 500,000 parishioners
McFarland said in a confidential campaign-strategy memo written last year when she considered challenging Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan, "Our family worships in the Episcopal Church, but we are not evangelical."
McFarland, a wealthy Park Avenue matron and former Reagan-era Pentagon official, went on to add that many liberal Republicans "feel alienated by the current conservative direction" of the national party.
"She's of that Manhattan mentality that approves the more liberal or left-wing you are," said Motley.
"She's saying, 'I'm a Rockefeller Republican, I'm not one of those religious wackos over there on the right,' " Motley continued. "She insinuating that evangelicals are the religious right and they're controlling things in the country. Well, evangelicals are not running the country, I wish they were, but they're not."
Former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, McFarland's foe in the Republican battle to win the right to take on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will get a big boost this week with an endorsement from state GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik, party insiders told The Post.
Meanwhile, the McFarland strategy memo contained this tough description of Maloney: "Carolyn Maloney is an uninspired and uninspiring Democratic Party hack who has very little to show for her 14 years in Congress.
"She votes a straight liberal democratic [sic] line and the only major piece of legislation she has sponsored in her years in Congress has been a bill to promote breastfeeding," the memo continued.
...party insiders told The Post. Meanwhile, the McFarland strategy memo contained this tough description of Maloney: "Carolyn Maloney is an uninspired and uninspiring Democratic Party hack who has very little to show for her 14 years in Congress.
<"She votes a straight liberal democratic [sic] line and the only major piece of legislation she has sponsored in her years in Congress has been a bill to promote breastfeeding," the memo continued.
Sorry!!