Los Angeles Times: Hardball Democratic operative finds joy designing Christian vestments

April 5, 2015

South, a famously pugilistic political strategist, was neither apologizing nor seeking forgiveness as he answered, very much in the affirmative, his own query.

“If you hold every practitioner of every profession to a very pure standard of doing the Christian thing,” he said, “most people are going to fall outside that orbit.”

South is a person of strong and abiding religious faith, which may surprise those familiar with his pile-driving personality and blast furnace of a mouth, features engaged the past few decades by several California Democrats, including, most notably, former Gov. Gray Davis.

Politics has always been a mix of the high-minded and underhanded, fusing the idealistic and cynical.

Still, the hobby South has pursued for nearly 30 years, a sideline to political warfare, is more than a bit unexpected: It’s designing religious vestments, the elaborate garments used as part of Christian worship. His latest work, an altar frontal featuring tapestry and gold fringe, will be used for the first time at an Easter service in Fullerton.

Talk about the sacred and profane.

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