Posted on 02/20/2006 5:29:44 AM PST by NapkinUser
ATLANTA — For once, Ralph Reed’s timing is off.
So often in his 44 years, he has been in the right place at the right time.
In 1989, when Pat Robertson was looking for a sharp, telegenic young operative to build a powerful national political organization for Christian conservatives, Reed was there – and the Christian Coalition of America was born.
In 1997, with the coalition in the cross hairs of multiple federal investigations and beginning a long decline toward insolvency, Reed was out the door.
In 2002, as chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, he got credit for a near-complete GOP sweep of state political offices from the statehouse to the U.S. Senate.
In 2004, as regional chairman for the Bush-Cheney ticket, he helped President Bush win re-election with a crucial sweep of the Southern states.
Yet when Reed decided to make his first try for elective office, he picked 2006. Now that decision may turn out to have been a politically fatal miscalculation.
As Reed crisscrosses Georgia campaigning for lieutenant governor, from the piney mountains to the moss-draped coast to the bustling streets of Atlanta, he keeps hearing the same refrain:
What about Jack Abramoff?
When 350 evangelical Christians gathered last month in a big Baptist church in the rolling wooded hills of an Atlanta suburb for the Christian Coalition of Georgia’s Families and Freedom Kickoff, this was the moderator’s first question in a forum featuring Reed and his Republican primary opponent:
“As Christians we’re held to a higher standard. Is there anything you’ve done in your political life that you wish you hadn’t done?”
“I thought I might get that question,” Reed began with a smile. He then launched into the same response he has been giving, nearly word for word, to audiences all over the state for the past two months.
“Seven years ago I was approached by a longtime friend … who asked me if I’d be willing to work on campaigns to stop the expansion of casinos with the understanding that I would not be paid with any revenues that derived from gambling. I relied on those assurances.
“If I knew then what I know now, I obviously wouldn’t have done that work. On reflection, I should have turned it down. And to the extent that it caused me difficulty with the pro-family movement, I’ve stated that I regret that and I’ve accepted total responsibility for it.
“But let me tell you what I don’t appreciate and what I think the voters of Georgia are going to reject, and that is the unfair attempt by the liberal media and others to engage in guilt by association and to associate me with the misdeeds of others. It’s wrong.”
The misdeeds of Abramoff, Reed’s self-proclaimed “longtime friend,” are jaw-dropping in their scale and brazenness. In a plea agreement with federal prosecutors last month , the Washington lobbyist admitted to multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion. He faces years in prison and millions in fines and restitution payments in what may turn out to be one of Washington’s biggest financial scandals in decades.
Reed has not been charged with any crime. However, a mountain of e-mails and other documents unearthed by a still-unfolding federal investigation makes it clear that his work as a political consultant was an integral part of Abramoff’s scheme to swindle his Indian-tribe clients out of tens of millions of dollars.
What Reed knew about Abramoff’s operations, or when he knew it, remains unclear. Yet the taint of his association with Abramoff – and the fear of further revelations as the lobbyist cooperates with prosecutors – has given many Georgia Republicans a bad case of the jitters and has turned what should have been a cakewalk to the state’s
second-highest office into a brutal uphill slog.
In a statewide poll conducted for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month, Reed’s little-known Republican opponent in the July primary, state Sen. Casey Cagle, outperformed Reed in a matchup with an unnamed Democrat. Cagle led the Democrat, 35 percent to 30 percent; Reed trailed the Democrat, 33 percent to 36 percent.
Campaign contributions have fallen off, too. After pulling in $1.4 million in donations in the first half of 2005, Reed slumped to $400,000 in the second half – less than Cagle took in – as the Abramoff revelations mushroomed.
Reed’s connection to Abramoff goes back more than two decades and is steeped in a shared zeal for right-wing Republican politics.
Reed was born in Portsmouth while his father, a Navy ophthalmologist, was stationed in Hampton Roads. He spent much of his childhood in Miami and finished high school in Toccoa, Ga., a small town near the South Carolina border. He attended the University of Georgia, where he joined and quickly took over the campus College Republicans chapter.
In the early 1980s, Reed became executive director of the national College Republicans. Abramoff was the organization’s national chairman. He, Reed and Grover Norquist, who preceded Reed as executive director, were a triumvirate dedicated to steering the group on a hard-right course.
Norquist went on to become a leading conservative strategist and anti-tax activist who also has turned up in the revelations about Abramoff’s lobbying activities.
In 1989, after getting a doctorate in history from Emory University, Reed heeded the call from Robertson to take over the day-to-day operations of the religious broadcaster’s new evangelical political organization.
Over the next eight years, Reed was a key player in turning the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition into a national powerhouse of the religious right, mobilizing millions of evangelical voters and helping Republicans win control of Congress in 1994. At the zenith of its power in 1996, the coalition had an annual budget of $26 million.
Reed’s boyish good looks and polished stage presence made him a media darling. In 1995, Time magazine put him on its cover, dubbing him “The Right Hand of God.”
Behind the scenes, however, the coalition was being dogged by the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission for allegedly stepping over the line into partisan politics. The IRS ultimately denied the group tax-exempt status.
In 1997, Reed resigned and set up a political consulting business in suburban Atlanta.
By 2004, the Christian Coalition’s budget had shrunk 95 percent, to $1.3 million. It was $2.3 million in the red and was being hounded by a variety of creditors for nonpayment of bills.
In his new life as a consultant, one of the first people Reed turned to for help was Abramoff. In a 1998 e-mail to Abramoff, he wrote:
“Hey, now that I’m done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.”
His friend delivered. Over the next few years, according to documents made public by a Senate committee, Abramoff paid Reed at least $5 million to whip up evangelicals’ fervor against Indian casinos and various other forms of legalized gambling in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.
Reed says his efforts sprang from a longstanding moral abhorrence of gambling. Abramoff’s motivation, however, was far different. The gambling operations targeted by Reed’s righteous army threatened the profits of Abramoff’s clients – Indian tribes that already operated legal and lucrative casinos and didn’t want more competition.
In many cases, the payments to Reed’s company were funneled through various intermediaries, which obscured the fact that they originated with casino-rich Indian tribes. One group that was used frequently for the transfers was Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.
The tribes paid dearly for what Reed helped deliver . According to the Abramoff plea agreement, Abramoff’s co-conspirator, public relations consultant Michael Scanlon, charged the Indians vastly inflated fees and secretly kicked back half of the profits to Abramoff. Prosecutors estimate that the tribes overpaid by $25 million.
E-mails between Abramoff and Scanlon, a former aide to indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, are full of exuberant references to the money chase:
“We’z in the money!!!” Abramoff exulted to Scanlon in a 2001 exchange after Reed agreed to undertake a $100,000 campaign against a rival tribe’s casino in Texas.
The Indians bilked by the scheme and the Christians enlisted to fight gambling are portrayed in equally disparaging terms in the correspondence. Abramoff refers to the Indians in e-mails as “moronic,” “monkeys” and “troglodytes.” Scanlon, in a strategy memo to a tribal representative, calls the Christians “wackos.”
In a final indignity, after one rival tribe’s Texas casino was successfully shut down, Abramoff and Scanlon persuaded the tribe to pay them $4.2 million in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get it reopened – never telling them they had collected millions to help get it closed.
Reed’s portrayal of his role has evolved over time as details of the scheme have dribbled out.
Reed, who declined an interview with The Virginian-Pilot, said in 2004 of Abramoff’s lobbying firm: “We had no direct knowledge of their clients or their interests.”
By May 2005, he was acknowledging that he knew Abramoff had tribal clients, but said “I did not know the details.”
By December, it was clear from the e-mails that Abramoff told Reed his fees were coming from tribal clients.
In a Dec. 9 speech, Reed conceded that he knew Abramoff “had tribal clients who had their own reasons for opposing new casinos,” but said he was assured that his fees would not derive from gambling activity.
At last month’s Christian Coalition forum, the Abramoff connection haunted Reed like a ghost.
It should have been friendly territory for the man who put the coalition on the political map. But the sympathies of the cheering, foot-stomping, sign-waving crowd appeared evenly divided between Reed and Cagle.
Some, such as Lettie Nixon of Marietta, were unswerving in their loyalty to Reed: “We’ve been watching him since his Christian Coalition days. He’s a good person, a family man. And as the family goes, so goes the nation.”
Her husband, Frank, ascribed the negative news about Reed to “a bunch of lying liberals.”
Janet Gibson of Lawrence-ville said it’s time to move past the furor over Reed’s work for Abramoff: “He has apologized and recognized that was not the best decision. I think it takes a strong person to say 'I made a mistake.’”
Martin Ellard of Gainesville was less charitable: “I know Ralph real well. He’s done a wonderful job with the Christian Coalition. But I’m disappointed that he didn’t have a little more knowledge of the people he was associating with – and I’m not sure he didn’t. He’s a real smart guy.”
Reed still has his backers among Georgia’s Republican politicians, many of whom have benefited from his party-building work in the state. One such ally is U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland.
“Ralph’s been a friend of mine for a long time, and I’m sticking with my friends until my friends tell me I can quit,” Westmoreland said. “I believe what Ralph says. I still believe that we live in a country where everybody’s innocent until proven guilty.”
There have been defections, however. Last month, nine members of Reed’s 600-member statewide steering committee switched their allegiance to Cagle.
One of them is Bruce Garraway, a city councilman in Snellville who teaches in a Christian high school.
“I hung on to Ralph for a while,” Garraway said, “but it just seemed like every day more was coming out, more was coming out, more was coming out. It was like, when is this ever going to end?”
Some Republicans are warning that if Reed is nominated, he could bring down the whole GOP ticket this fall, undoing the gains he has helped the party achieve.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an open letter to Reed last year from Bob Irvin, a former Republican leader in the Georgia House, that began: “Please withdraw your candidacy for Georgia lieutenant governor, in order to avoid a grievous, majority-wrecking split in the Republican Party.”
As an evangelical Christian himself, he finds Reed’s activities offensive, Irvin said in an interview: “Ralph is someone who uses Christians for his own purposes.”
Hundreds of miles from Georgia, another disillusioned Christian is sitting in a cell at Greensville Correctional Center near Emporia, Va.
Robin Vanderwall, 37, was convicted in 2004 of soliciting sex with a minor over the Internet and sentenced to seven years.
At the time of his arrest, he was a third-year law student at Regent University in Virginia Beach. He had run several successful campaigns for local Republican politicians, including then-Del. Bob McDonnell, who took office last month as state attorney general.
At the Virginia Republican convention in 2000, Vanderwall said, he was recruited by political consultants Phil Cox and Tim Phillips, who had also done work for McDonnell, to take over a new organization called the Faith and Family Alliance.
“They painted a picture of it as something that was going to be taking an active role in the upcoming Bush campaign,” Vanderwall recalled in a prison interview.
After a few weeks, Vanderwall said, he began getting phone calls from an assistant to Reed at Century Strategies, Reed’s Georgia consulting firm.
“He said, 'You’re going to be getting a package in a few days from Americans for Tax Reform, and I need you to call me as soon as you get this package,’ ” Vanderwall said. “He didn’t tell me what was in the package.
“For six or seven days, nonstop every day, he was calling, asking, 'Has the package arrived? Has the package arrived?’ ”
The package turned out to be an envelope with a $150,000 check, signed by Norquist. Vanderwall said he was instructed to put it in the bank, write a Faith and Family Alliance check in the same amount, and send it to Reed’s firm.
“I didn’t have any idea what the check was for,” Vanderwall said. “There was never any explanation.”
Weeks more went by. The presidential election came and went, but Faith and Family Alliance had no role in it. When Vanderwall pressed for answers, he said, he got none.
In the end, it seems, Faith and Family Alliance had no reason for being – other than to act as the pass-through to Reed’s firm and a smaller, earlier transfer to a Richmond-area congressional campaign. The group’s incorporation papers lapsed and “it just went away,” Vanderwall said. “It died an inglorious death.”
Reed has not disputed Vanderwall’s account.
It wasn’t until last fall that Vanderwall got any answers – from a reporter at The Washington Post. The Post and the Journal-Constitution reported that the money Vanderwall passed to Reed originated with eLottery Inc., a Connecticut-based online gambling services company that had hired Abramoff to fight a pending bill in Congress to outlaw Internet gambling.
Abramoff, in turn, enlisted the help of Reed, who worked against the bill on grounds that it contained loopholes that would have allowed some forms of online gambling to remain legal.
The legislation was defeated. Since then, online gambling revenues have soared.
“I’m a Christian,” Vanderwall said. “I’m very strong about my faith. … It’s time for Republicans to stop duping real, decent Christian people.”
Back in Georgia, Reed is doing what he has always done – running hard.
Two days after the Christian Coalition event, on the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Georgia Right to Life held its annual “memorial service for the unborn” in front of the gold-domed state Capitol.
At the end of the service, in a driving rain, the group staged a silent one-mile march through downtown Atlanta led by the keynote speaker, former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller.
Reed and Cagle were both present for the event. Yet it was Reed who hustled to the front of the crowd and marched at Miller’s side, splashing through puddles under a red and white umbrella, as cameras clicked away.
"Robin Vanderwall, 37, was convicted in 2004 of soliciting sex with a minor over the Internet and sentenced to seven years."
WTH? And then he says he's a strong Christian? And this seeming contradiction is not explored or explained? Things like this just leap out at the reader and makes one question the entire article.
Ping.
You are not guilty by association.
****
People say the funniest things!
Until we learn the difference, then he'll qualify that, too.
Martin Ellard of Gainesville was less charitable: “I know Ralph real well. He’s done a wonderful job with the Christian Coalition. But I’m disappointed that he didn’t have a little more knowledge of the people he was associating with – and I’m not sure he didn’t. He’s a real smart guy.”
Ditto.
Thanks NapkinUser for the ping. Reed will seriously hurt the Republican party in GA if he runs. He'll taint everyone running.
Reed. What a maroon. He should withdraw immediately, retreat from public appearances for at least a year or two, and then, maybe, he can resume a role in the GOP.
I went to high school with Ralph. He was two years behind me.
I've been proud of his public success. But it seems there are things that have gone on in secret that he needs to take care of before running for public office.
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