The story focuses on the role of Cincinatti Christian Right leader, Phil Burress.  Here are some excerpts:

SHARONVILLE, Ohio -- If Republicans still have an ace up their sleeve in this fall campaign, it's people like Phil Burress.

Mr. Burress, a thrice-married, self-described former pornography addict, is president of Citizens for Community Values, a statewide network of politically active Christian conservatives. His work here in 2004 helped turn out evangelical voters who put President Bush over the top in Ohio -- the state that made the difference between victory and defeat.

This time around, Mr. Burress isn't nearly so happy with the president and his party. In fact, he can hardly say enough about how fed up he is with Republicans from Columbus to Washington for not following through on promised social initiatives. He is especially exercised about Ohio's Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who incensed conservatives last year by helping to broker a compromise with Democrats over confirming the president's judicial nominees.

So what is his advice to others? Hold your nose and vote. And that includes voting for Mr. DeWine, whose fate could determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate.

That attitude represents an important firewall for the Republican Party at a time when most polls and independent analysts forecast big midterm election losses Nov. 7, threatening the party's majorities in Congress, the governorships and some state legislatures. Republicans worry that religious conservatives, so critical to Republicans' wins of recent years, will stay home this time.

But a look at the movement in Ohio suggests otherwise. The turnout machine that has pulled evangelical conservatives to the polls in massive numbers is churning away, and for a reason little appreciated outside their circles: the sense that voting is their Christian duty....

Earlier this month, Mr. Burress's organization sent a million voter guides to 7,500 churches statewide for distribution in Sunday bulletins. The guide refers voters to the group's election Web site, where they can type their zip code and see all candidates who will be on their ballots, alongside each candidate's stance on abortion, marriage, pornography and other social issues. Those guides are based on candidates' responses to a questionnaire. Many Democrats, and moderate Republicans, didn't respond; the site notes that.

The 64-year-old Mr. Burress is an essential player in the Bush-era Republican Party's vaunted get-out-the-vote machine. In 2004, he led the drive to put on the Ohio ballot a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions. Then he put his organization, based in this conservative Cincinnati suburb, to work registering tens of thousands of new voters to support the amendment.

... Bush strategist Karl Rove calls him one of the party's "spark plugs."

The political effectiveness of the Christian right has been magnified over many years by being underestimated, ignored, and dismissed by opposing political factions in the GOP, and in the Democratic party and among liberal interest groups. And now, going into the final week, the Christian right got the gift of a hot button:  

Now, late in this year's campaigns, a new controversy over gay marriage is energizing conservative Christian voters. New Jersey's Supreme Court, in a closely watched case, on Wednesday declared the state has to give same-sex couples the same rights and benefits as those granted to married heterosexuals. Within an hour of the news, the ruling set off a series of conference calls among Christian conservative leaders, including Mr. Burress.

"In the Christian conservative movement, it's created a shock wave," says Harry Jackson Jr., a Pentecostal bishop in Lanham, Md. He, like Mr. Burress, is a board member of the Arlington Group, a national network of conservative religious leaders. "This is probably the best possible thing that could have happened to the moral values movement two weeks before the election," he says,