This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.
Arizona’s fourth legislative district, located in the suburban heart of Maricopa County, might be the ultimate bellwether in the ultimate bellwether state. And this fall, the stakes are impossibly high, not just at the presidential level—where polls show Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in a dead heat—but all the way down the ballot. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature by just one vote. In Arizona, where each legislative district elects two representatives, control of the state house could come down to Democrats’ efforts to flip one seat and hold another in this district that includes parts of Phoenix and Scottsdale.
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In their quest to hold onto the legislature, Republicans have turned to a member of a famous Arizona family—Pamela Carter, older sister of the original Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter. On the campaign trail, the candidate Carter has talked up her work as a successful entrepreneur and a record of academic accomplishment, and boasts of having “my family’s full support” for her state house run. But a review of her record and past statements tells a much different story: In contrast to the fourth district’s moderate profile, Carter is a fervently anti-abortion minister who has been “blessed with end-time revelation” and who has made confusing claims about her past. And one notable member of her family is not on board—her famous sister, an advocate for reproductive rights.
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“On her website, Pam claims to have her ‘family’s full support,’” Lynda Carter said in a statement to Mother Jones. “I have known Pam my entire life, which is why I sadly cannot endorse her for this or any public office.”
Pamela Carter has offered an inconsistent accounting of her educational background. Her page at Ballotpedia states that she “earned a master’s degree in Communications and Biblical studies and attended Arizona State University,” which a spokesperson for the elections site confirmed was based on an informational survey that was “verified by the candidate.” “I was raised in Scottsdale, went right here to Arcadia High, ASU, and I just love our city,” she said on a podcast in 2022. This is technically true. Carter did attend ASU, and she does also have a master’s degree. But the reality of her resume is a bit more complicated.
According to an ASU spokesperson, Carter was at one point enrolled at the university, but did not graduate. Instead, according to her LinkedIn page and other interviews, she attended an unspecified bible college in Kansas City, Missouri, and later received a master’s degree in “communications and media studies” from the Primus University of Theology, a Phoenix-based institution that affirms in its mission statement that “life begins at conception.” (One of the prerequisites for admission is that you order a copy of the founder’s book.) Primus, which aims to prepare its students “for their Ministry calling,” is not accredited by any agency recognized by the Department of Education. Instead, it cites the approval of the University Accreditation Association, which evaluates institutions on their adherence to “biblical truths.” Its degree programs are “designed for the specific and singular purpose of qualifying individuals for Christian Ministry.”
But Carter has also described that degree differently in different contexts. Her campaign website during her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Scottsdale city council said she held a “Master’s Degree in Business and Communications,” a claim she also repeated that year in an interview on a local podcast. In another video that year, she boasted of having a “master’s degree in theology, as well as in mass communications.” A current campaign biography states that “I received my master’s degree in Communications and Biblical studies.”
Carter, who did not respond to requests for comment, has leaned into her biography during her run for office, arguing that her business experiences give her an advantage in the political realm. Foremost among those ventures was Jon Cole Systems, a gym she once owned with her ex-husband, the powerlifter Jon Cole. Newspaper ads for the fitness center sometimes featured Lynda Carter, touting the benefits of Cole’s “TOTAL WOMAN” workout program.
“It was the largest [gym] in the nation at the time,” Pamela Carter boasted in a 2022 interview, in which she suggested that working people struggling to find housing in Scottsdale needed to hustle as hard as she had when she owned two homes and was helping to run the business in the 1970s.
For a few years, the gym was a major success, with clients such as the Green Bay Packers and members of the Phoenix Suns. But it soon went downhill. The company pursued Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982, and was sold for $60,000 the next year, according to an Arizona Republic report in 1983. The couple divorced around the same time.
After the gym business fell through, Carter went on to a long career as a Christian wellness influencer, pitching the gospel alongside weight-loss and nutrition tips. She moved to California and hosted a fitness show called “Get in Shape with Pamela Carter” (on the Trinity Broadcasting Network) and another program on CBN called “Fit for Life.”
“I was one of the first and only, that I know, to actually use weights and aerobics to Christian gospel music,” she said in 2022.
Eventually, after moving to Kansas City in the 1990s to attend Bible college, Carter started a ministry of her own, mixing divine revelation with health and wellness. Ravished Heart Communications Ministries International, which she launched with her second husband, Bruce, after a 50-day prophetic encounter in 2002 in which “the Lord revealed Himself to Pamela as her Messianic Bridegroom,” sold $12 self-help tapes that promised to help followers “lose weight” and defeat “food addiction.” “[Y]ou will learn how to increase your metabolism through Biblical eating habits and get the most out of your workouts. Pamela will also teach you how to overcome and break strongholds emotionally and spiritually that keep you compulsively addicted to overeating,” one two-part series promised. Another tape included a “one-hour prayer session” in which Carter “prays for you to be set free from [food] addiction.”
The ministry aimed to make an impact not just in the Christian dieting space, but in mass media. Carter asked her followers for donations so she could work in Hollywood as an “intercessor”—essentially an activist prayer warrior—and she produced her own content, including a lengthy interview with a woman who claimed that her daughter had been resurrected from the dead; and a feature film about the life of Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas woman who was executed by then-Gov. George W. Bush after converting to Christianity on death row. (Carter played the judge in the movie.)
But she ran into more financial difficulties around this time. Carter and her husband fell into debt during the 2008 Recession, and a chapter-7 bankruptcy filing in 2009 stated that Carter was back in the nutrition business. According to court documents, she was doing “nutritional sales” for Mannatech, a multi-level marketing company. “Pamela’s income comes from pyramid sales and fluctuates every month,” the filing stated, although it never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars. At the time, Mannatech, which had deep links to the Christian Right, was mired in controversy. In 2007, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sued the company, alleging “unlawful, misleading sales practices,” including testimonials that suggested that the supplements had cured autism and cancer, and brought a woman out of a coma. (The company settled with the state in 2009, and ultimately paid $4 million in restitution to customers and $2 million to the state, with no acknowledgment of wrongdoing.)
By 2011, Carter had rebounded: “We are praying for a new skin care line,” the Ravished Heart website announced that year.
Carter was not just pitching products, though. She was selling a very particular kind of theology, rooted in a desire to see the United States “united for Jesus,” and a belief that modern-day prophets—like herself—were transmitting revelations from God. A biography at the ministry stated that Carter “is very passionate about her love for the Lord and has been blessed with end-time revelation of His desire for His bride.” (The full revelation was available for purchase for $25.) She talked frequently about building influence on the “Media mountain” and said in 2011 that she was part of “God’s media army…to be raised up for such a time as this, to take possession of the arts, the entertainment media, the internet.”
The term is often used by proponents of a Christian nationalist movement sometimes called the New Apostolic Reformation and a belief its adherents subscribe to known as Seven Mountains Dominionism, which aims to take gain influence over the seven spheres (or “mountains”) of government, education, media, family, entertainment, religion, and business.
In response to a candidate questionnaire from the city of Scottsdale two years ago, Carter said she had “been involved…as a volunteer” with three churches or organizations, all of which had ties to the NAR. They included Intercessors for America, a national prayer organization that warns that “there is an Enemy of our souls and our nation who orchestrates a coordinated battle plan that is discernible and beatable with spiritual weapons.”
Another group she touted her work with was the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer, whose founding pastor, Mike Bickle, was dismissed last year amid allegations of sexual abuse. The church, where worship services have run 24/7 since 1999, has “been criticized by some pastors for what they describe as unorthodox theology and a cultish atmosphere, charges that Mr. Bickle rejects,” the New York Times reported in 2011. (In response to a Kansas City Star investigation into Bickle earlier this year, the organization emphasized that his alleged abuse predated the church’s creation, while Bickle has admitted to “inappropriate behavior” but not “the more intense sexual activities that some are suggesting.”) Long before he was forced out, Bickle had courted controversy with his assertions from the pulpit that Oprah was a forerunner of the Antichrist and that God sent Hitler to kill Jewish people because they wouldn’t accept Christianity.
Carter has described her foray into politics in ways that mirror her earlier work in “God’s media army.”
“What I’m learning in this whole government mountain thing,” she said in a 2020 conversation with Patricia King, a Phoenix-based minister, is that “the warfare just increases.”
“I think we need to do a lot of battle in the spirit—either certain individuals will repent and get in alignment with God’s will, or they’ll be cut off and replaced,” Carter said in the same video, after King discussed efforts to take back the US House of Representatives that year. “There are many scriptures about that. You know, He allows evil to prosper for a season, that it may be destroyed forever. I believe that’s where we are right now in the United States, and around the world, really.”
In that interview, Carter, who served that year as an advisor to the Trump campaign in the state, said she had acted as a prayer “intercessor” while working as a paid poll worker in Arizona. “I was dancing around, I had so much joy in just praying over every person that came in, you know, it was so fun,” she said. “But there’s also a lot of corruption I saw—not at the poll where I was working but at the election facility—and we just have to really watch and pray, watch and pray, and then you can cut that off in the spirit and then report it.”
In addition to her experience owning the fitness center and her advanced degree, Carter has often championed her involvement with two nonprofits, Help 4 Kidz—which provides food and clothing to needy kids—and the National Latina/Latino Commission. The former, she boasted during her city council campaign, had received the “Martin Luther King Award” for its work, which the nonprofit says it received from President Barack Obama. While the group’s founder was separately honored by the White House for her charitable endeavors, the MLK “Drum Major Award” was in fact a mail-order prize in which the White House would send a ceremonial pin and letter to anyone who had been nominated by a neighbor. The commission, which sounds like an official agency, is in fact a Christian organization designed “to mentor on the seven spheres of influence,” and notes on an archived version of its website (which has been down since June) that it was “seeking [sponsors] to Build Bomb Shelters near schools” in Israel. The group, which listed Carter as a board member, has a small footprint; the group has not reported more than $50,000 in revenue at any point in the last 12 years.
The overtly Christian language that has defined her life’s work has been less prominent in Carter’s campaigns, first in the 2022 race for city council and now for state representative. She has preferred to discuss her opposition to higher-density construction projects, and fears that migrants to the state are causing crime to spike.
In her statement opposing Pamela Carter’s candidacy, Lynda Carter praised the late Republican Sen. John McCain for his “decency, justice, and freedom,” while explicitly endorsing both of the Democrats running against her sister:
“As a native Arizonan, I am proud to endorse Kelli Butler and Karen Gresham to represent LD4 in Arizona’s State House. Kelli and Karen are both strong, experienced candidates, born and raised in Arizona,” she said. “They are working mothers fighting for the rights that matter most to Arizonans, especially every child’s right to a quality education.”
Democrats have made inroads in places like LD4 in recent election cycles with an emphasis on protecting public education and reproductive rights from overreach by Republicans at the state capital. Pamela Carter, for her part, has defended the state’s controversial voucher program and vowed to hold the line on one of the biggest issues facing social conservatives in Arizona right now: abortion.
The district offers a glimpse of how reproductive rights is playing at the ballot box in a highly competitive area. Christine Marsh, the district’s Democratic state senator, won her election in 2022 by a little more than 1,000 votes by relentlessly linking a Republican incumbent to the state legislature’s 15-week abortion ban. The current Republican state representative, Matt Gress, was one of three members of his party to break ranks and vote to repeal Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban, which offered no exceptions even for cases of rape. A recent Fox News survey found that supporters of an abortion-rights ballot initiative in Arizona outnumber opponents by roughly three-to-one—and 50-percent of Republicans said they approved. Carter, though, has sung a different tune.
“Hopefully we will stand and not allow any abortion,” she said in 2022, when asked how the legislature should respond to the repeal of Roe v. Wade. “If I were in that position, I would say no on any abortion.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-21 08:00:00
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