Penna Dexter is a radio commentator and columnist for various Christian conservative outlets. She is a frequent commentator and guest host for Point of View Radio Talk Show with Kerby Anderson. Her weekly commentaries air on the Moody Broadcasting Network and the Bott Radio Network. Penna’s columns appear at Baptist Press and the Christian Post blog page. Penna is an executive at Todd Dexter & Associates, the integrated marketing consulting company founded by her husband, Todd Dexter.

For eight years she served as Marlin Maddoux’s co-host on Point of View and for two years she co-hosted a daily drive time live broadcast on the Dallas-based Criswell Radio Network.

Penna’s interest in conservative politics and the issues that affect the family began when she was a child working on political campaigns with her parents. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in International Relations. She spent 8 years in the banking industry. She and her husband Todd have three children who are in their twenties. They are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate on constitutional issues, and has won three state landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases in the past few years alone. He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter century by Texas Lawyer, and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for his leadership and pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

PHILADELPHIA — When you think about it, the 2016 Democratic National Convention is just a big, sprawling, staggering expensive Rube Goldberg contraption built for the sole purpose of making a skeptical America trust Hillary Clinton.

The speeches (especially by that other husband-and-wife act, the Obamas) have been well-received, the Sanders-vs.-Clinton disunity that was supposed to cripple the party melted in the cascade of cheers as Bernie ordered the faithful to get into line. But restoring the trust of voters is in the hands of Clinton and Clinton alone, as even one of the main architects of the Hillary Trust Machine, campaign manager Robby Mook, admitted on the eve of her big closing-night speech.

“She has acknowledged that she needs to earn the trust of voters, and that this is something she needs to focus on … the convention is the beginning of that process,” the sunny-edgy 35-year-old told me during an interview for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast on Wednesday, a few hours before President Barack Obama’s rousing speech rocked the Wells Fargo Center.

Then he offered a surprisingly candid concession: The best way for her to restore that connection is for people to actually observe her president-ing, which isn’t exactly the way this process works.

“I don't think people will fully appreciate who she is until, knock on wood, she's elected president, because when she is president, I think she will be phenomenally successful because she's a work horse,” he said.

CLEVELAND — The leadership of the religious right once looked like a promising stronghold for the Never Trump movement, a bastion of the GOP deeply at odds with a man who is heretical on many of the political and personal values the country’s most prominent Christian leaders hold dear.

But in an exclusive roundtable conversation with POLITICO, five of America’s most influential religious conservatives said they are committed to supporting the GOP nominee, and some committed to activating their extensive grass-roots networks on his behalf this fall.

For them, Never Trump is not an option.

Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, longtime conservative activist and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America gathered during the Republican National Convention at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse in downtown Cleveland for a wide-ranging conversation about the values vote and the GOP nominee.

2016 Republican Party Platform

2016 Democratic Party Platform