The Top of the Ticket page at the L.A. Times today has a piece on the theological undercurrent in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race:

Sharron Angle (R-Southern Baptist) has taken some hits for describing her campaign as a “calling” from God and dismissing federal entitlement programs as a form of idolatry.
On Monday, Angle and her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Mormon) – who are neck-and-neck in the polls – whacked each other over a proposed mosque near ground zero in New York, despite the fact they both agreed with each other and disagreed with President Obama about it.
This ongoing holy war caught the attention of Bill Roberts, a former editor of the Tonopah Times-Bonanza and Goldfield News. His Thursday column detailed Angle’s role in an odd controversy in rural Nye County, where she served on the school board for several years.

The gist of Roberts’ column is that back in 1992, a high-school football coach suggested his players wear black jerseys for the big game as a symbolic gesture of the prior year’s painful loss. Apparently Angle and others in the community took offense and, according to Roberts, argued that “black as a color was thoroughly evil, invoking the supernatural and especially the devil.” The school subsequently banned the black jerseys.

Trivial anecdotes two decades old are of relatively minor import. The more serious question raised in Powers’ piece is whether Nevada’s fiscally conservative but often socially libertarian voters will punch the button for Angle after months of television ads–and editorials such as Roberts’–pointing to her past and present conservative religious views and how they guide her in matters both small and great.