If the key to winning the Republican presidential nomination is to win the South Carolina primary, then the key to winning that primary is to first win the hearts, minds -- and votes -- of this state's conservative Christians.

Nearly 19 years ago, a New England Episcopalian candidate for the GOP nomination the following summer told a Greenville audience of "my personal faith in Jesus Christ as my personal savior."

Robert Taylor, a Bob Jones University administrator, was part of a group of Christian activists who met privately with the candidate, seeking reassurance about his beliefs and how they applied to values issues.

Last week, Taylor, a Greenville County councilman, recalled how effectively that candidate delivered.

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Vice President George H.W. Bush went on to win the South Carolina primary, the nomination and the White House.

Now with his Methodist son, George W., having followed suit and into the downhill side of a second term, another New England Republican, Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, is wooing South Carolina Republicans.

Core voters

Can these core Republican voters, who by some estimates account for 30 percent to 40 percent of the GOP primary vote, accept a Mormon?

The answer appears mixed, but even a mixed response suggests that Romney, whose father was governor of Michigan and a 1968 GOP presidential contender, has a selling job ahead. He's also got the time in which to do it, the primary being 21 months away.

James Guth, a Furman University professor who specializes in religion and politics, says that while the question remains open, Romney's faith "is certainly not an advantage, but it's possible to overcome."

Romney's other problem may be philosophical accommodations he has had to make to win in a liberal Northeastern state, Guth said. "He's just got a lot of policy baggage that is just going to be as important as his Mormon faith. Among a number of religious Republicans, that Mormon identity is going to be a problem for him."

But Romney said his record "underscores the shared values that I have with people of strong religious convictions, whether Christian or Jewish, so I don't have to explain we have shared values. I can demonstrate it."

His examples, by Romney's reckoning, include opposing gay marriage and civil unions, fighting cloning and stem cell farming for new embryos, abstinence education in the classroom, vetoing legislation expanding abortion access through emergency contraception provisions, and support for capital punishment.

Selection process

Taylor may need a Bush-like meeting to overcome his reservations.

"With a lot of people, it would be a problem," Taylor said last week. "Certainly, if they had alternatives, it would rule him out with a lot of folks."

Taylor made it plain he would be one of those folks:

"Personally, if I had someone who stood equal on all the other issues and I had to find something to differentiate, that could be the thing. That's where you're looking."

All things being equal, if religion is a dividing line, one other potential candidate stands out. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, as frequent a visitor to South Carolina as Romney, is a Southern Baptist preacher.

"Huckebee just falls naturally into the dominant cultural mores of the party," Guth said.

Rick Beltram, the Spartanburg County Republican chairman, is high on Romney and has seen the issue come -- and go.

"When we first brought him down a year ago in February, it was a very big issue," Beltram said.

"Now that he's been around, talked to the activists twice in Spartanburg, once in Greenville, once in Lexington, you can start to see that that wall is breaking down."

"The core of the core is very comfortable with Gov. Romney on that issue," Beltram said.

Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a 4th District House member before winning a Senate seat in 2004, said that "10 or 12 years ago, it might have been an issue," but not now.

Meet head-on

Republican consultant Warren Tompkins, a key strategist in President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaign, said, "Right now, it's not as big an issue as I would have thought, but if he's smart, he'll deal with it up front and get it over with."

An old Phil Spector tune, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," is essentially Romney's answer.

"There seems to be a clear pattern. Before people know an individual, religion is the headline; after they know them and their record, it becomes a footnote. Often there is a watershed moment where the public focuses on a particular issue, then it's resolved," he said.

"I ran for governor in a state that's 55 percent Catholic and people wondered, 'Oh, will Catholics elect a Mormon?' That was the initial headline, if you will. It became a footnote as they came to know me."

Putting it behind him may be difficult in a state where Southern Baptists predominate, many of whom take their politics almost -- almost -- as seriously as church.

Issue raised

The Baptist Press news service, an arm of the SBC, recently distributed an article noting that some unnamed political observers "are predicting that Romney's religious affiliation could prevent many evangelical conservatives from casting their votes in his favor..."

Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist with a just-released book, "The New Southern Politics," said, "There are a lot of people ahead of Romney in the minds of most South Carolina primary voters. I'm sure that if you asked them right now in a poll they would be very open-minded, but as the vote nears, Romney, alas, like his dad, will have no traction."

Woodard said a recent poll he did showed that three of four GOP primary voters attended church "about once a week."

If religion enters the campaign overtly, Romney is likely to be ready.