Ralph Reed, Smart as the Devil

When Pat Robertson recruited Ralph Reed in 1989 to organize a grassroots lobby of evangelical conservatives, the brash young political operative pursued a smart strategy of "flying below the radar" of liberals, Democrats and the media. For the first couple of years, as the Christian Coalition developed, scarcely anyone noticed what Reed was doing. But as his efforts succeeded--and as he boasted of his ambitions--even the most obtuse Americans realized the religious right was taking over a major political party. And many people found that prospect alarming.

In response, the devilishly clever Reed is taking the religious right mainstream, recasting its image as moderate, reasonable, open, even tolerant. Much is riding on Reed's effort to depict the religious right--despite its theocratic worldview--as merely another interest group that seeks to be heard. If Bob Dole and Jack Kemp win and the Republicans maintain their hold on Capitol Hill, Reed's strategy of moderation will be vindicated and the Christian Coalition will enjoy unprecedented influence in the White House. If Dole and Kemp lose and the Republicans forfeit control of Congress, the Christian Coalition will be blamed, as it was for George Bush's defeat. Reed has no intention of repeating the mistakes of four years ago.

The religious right's sudden makeover is simply a sophisticated version of the stealth politics Reed used to penetrate various governmental structures, from local school boards to the Republican National Committee. Because the Christian Coalition can no longer "move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night" (as Reed indiscreetly described his group's methods in 1992), he has camouflaged it instead in harmless-looking clothing.

One night last spring, he brought his act to New York, the toughest town for an evangelical conservative, and within minutes had the Upper East Side Jewish audience clapping and chuckling. He knows exactly how to reach out to cosmopolitan skeptics by comparing his campaign to civil rights and feminist movements, by pleading for "a place at the table" and by sounding reasonable about issues such as gay rights and democratic pluralism. Reed offers a platitude for every problem: "We don't need government to force our values on other people, because we believe that most Americans already share our values," he said that evening. "They may not share our politics, but they most certainly share our values." Reed later displayed steely skill in rebuffing reporters' inquiries about some of the bigots who have been embraced by the Christian Coalition. He strives to avoid scrutiny of the coalition's moderate facade.

Ralph Reed's Trojan horse has been around since 1993, when he made his first overtures in the national media about "casting a wider net" of inclusive-ness. But his push toward the center took on greater consequence in the early stages of this year's presidential campaign, when he suppressed his membership's preference for the flamboyantly fascistic Pat Buchanan while promoting the dull but dependable candidacy of Dole. In the process, the articulate Reed established himself as the preeminent spokesman for his movement, obscuring his boss Robertson, whose self-righteous extremism tends to frighten ordinary citizens.

Despite Reed's camera-ready smile and baby-blue eyes, however, the aging millionaire televangelist still wields control. As the executive director of the Christian Coalition, Reed is a hired hand who answers to Robertson, the coalition's president and founder. And despite his protégé's talk of tolerance and shared values, Robertson shows few signs of abandoning his crusade for a Christian America where abortion is illegal, pornography is banned, homosexuals are shunned and every school day begins with a prayer to Jesus.

Reed's rise to prominence was accelerated last year when he made the cover of Time. His status as a trendsetter was confirmed again several months ago when Newsweek ran an excerpt from his latest book, Active Faith. Reed is a favored guest on the television-chatter circuit as well as a useful source for political reporters and columnists.

Skeptical listeners who expect a scary sermon get instead an articulate, familiar homily about understanding and tolerance. "Religious conservatives," Reed said in a lecture last year, believe in "a nation of safe streets, strong families, schools that work, marriages that stay together, with a smaller government, lower taxes and civil rights for all. Religious conservatives do not countenance discrimination--or special rights--for anyone." Few who absorb this sweetly reasonable discourse know enough about the Christian Coalition's goals and methods to comprehend the striking disparity between what Reed says and what his organization actually does.

But there is much more to Reed than patter. With a Ph.D. in history, he takes the long view. Having worked in congressional campaigns since he was an adolescent, he knows politics from the ground up. Consider the opinion of one Democratic consultant who has fought coalition-backed candidates in Pennsylvania, Texas and California: "Ralph is one of the most talented political operatives I've seen during 25 years in this business." Reed has mastered the communications technology that dominates modern politics, from fax trees to computerized voter lists to satellite conferencing. Starting with little more than a roster of Robertson's volunteers and contributors (and $67,000 from the GOP), he has built an organization that claims nearly 2 million activists. This year, Reed vowed that the Christian Coalition would deliver 85 million "pro-family" voter guides and congressional "scorecards" to churches and communities across the country.

This kind of unabashed electioneering has been protected from public scrutiny by the coalition's front as a "social welfare organization," which it has used to avoid disclosing its contributions and spending to the Federal Election Commission. Until now, at least: In late July the FEC filed a suit against the coalition for violating federal election laws by illegally assisting Republican candidates, including George Bush, Newt Gingrich and Oliver North, in the elections of 1990, 1992 and 1994. The decision to sue--supported by the FEC's Republican members as well as by its Democrats--was made after an investigation of the coalition's activities that began in 1992.

Reed instantly denounced the FEC lawsuit as a "frivolous" attempt to drive "people of faith" out of politics, and declared that the coalition won't be deterred from its election-year plans. Such determination, regardless of legal or ethical obstacles, is what has enabled the coalition to seize control of the Republican Party in 18 states, turning Robertson and Reed into kingmakers.

That is why their early decision to support Dole was so crucial to the Kansan's candidacy, though it was not made official. At the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory conference in Washington in October 1995, where all but one of the Republican candidates appeared, Reed said that "the question is not who we will endorse, the question is who will endorse our agenda. We do not bear the name of Ronald Reagan, or Bob Dole, or Newt Gingrich. We bear the name that is above every name. We bear the name of him to whom every knee shall bow!"

In retrospect, that sort of piety rings false. Reed and Robertson's preference became obvious as the electoral season wore on. Finally, in the decisive South Carolina primary in March, local Christian Coalition leaders openly assisted the battered front-runner.

Only after Dole's nomination was assured did the mask of neutrality slip--and, typically, it was Robertson, not Reed, who blurted the truth. While hosting a The 700 Club telethon last April, Robertson displayed a newspaper cartoon that portrayed Dole crucified by the religious right. In the cartoon Dole was depicted wearing a crown of thorns that spelled out Christian Coalition. "Without the Christian Coalition, Bob Dole probably wouldn't be the nominee," said Robertson. "They've helped him."

Still trying to help Dole, Reed committed an embarrassing postprimary gaffe over the supersensitive matter of abortion. After Reed was quoted saying that the platform's references to a constitutional amendment could be watered down, orthodox religious rightists and Buchanan supporters accused the Christian Coalition leader of betraying the pro-life cause.

Reed quickly retreated, covering his tracks with feeble denials. During a television appearance, he even asserted that in the Newsweek excerpt from his book, "I specifically say that the Christian Coalition will not go to San Diego and offer alternative language." The excerpt says nothing of the kind, but Reed realized that his trial balloon had been about as airworthy as the Hindenburg was.

The abortion flap illustrated the strategic perspective that now shapes Reed's rhetoric. As he knows, the unvarnished religious right is acceptable only to a minority of voters--especially in a general election. To elect Dole, who needs fundamentalist Christian votes but must not be seen pandering to them, the safest course is to reposition the movement and postpone its demands until after November.

Yet the younger man's energetic attempts to ease public apprehensions about his movement must be measured against the record. Most troubling to those who must judge Reed's sincerity is the penchant for deception that has become the Christian Coalition's political trademark.

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Reed has long styled himself as the "Christian Lee Atwater." To those familiar with the Republican strategist, this self-characterization suggests a dark side. A youthful, guitar-playing hotshot whose sharp political instincts helped elect numerous candidates (including George Bush), Atwater was notorious for using underhanded tactics and appeals to prejudice if they would gain victory. (In 1987 Robertson himself said his presidential campaign had been victimized by Atwater's dirty tricks.) One need not delve too deeply into the coalition's past to find examples of Reed imitating Atwater's worst excesses.

When the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, the Christian Coalition played a role second only to Newt Gingrich's political action committee, Gopac. While researching Dirty Little Secrets, their landmark study of political corruption, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato and Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson analyzed nearly 200 of the coalition's voter guides for 1994. They found "manipulations, distortions and outright falsehoods" designed to swing voters into the Republican column. Republicans who opposed term limits were mysteriously unrated on that issue. The worst example uncovered by Sabato and Simpson was, not surprisingly, the coalition's misuse of the issue of homosexuality. In 19 close congressional races--including the reelection effort of Representative Dan Rostenkowski (D.-Ill.), then the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--churchgoers were advised that the Democratic candidates supported "promoting homosexuality to school-children."

This hair-raising allegation, according to the footnotes in the voter guides, was based on House roll call vote 91. But that particular vote was actually on an amendment that, among other things, prohibited use of federal funds for any educational program that promotes homosexuality--and all of the targeted Democrats had voted in favor of it. Republicans who had cast the (continued on page 136)Ralph Reed(continued from page 92) same vote suffered no mention of "promoting homosexuality" in the voter guides for their races. The inaccuracy of the smear remained hidden, of course, until it was much too late. After the election Reed took credit publicly for the turnover of two dozen formerly Democratic seats.

The selection of homosexuality as a voter-guide buzzword was no accident. Few subjects engender as much hysteria and hatred from the religious right as society's increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians, whom fundamentalists and evangelicals consider an affront to God. But Reed's public attitude these days is that the religious right should treat gays with enlightened disapproval instead of vilification. In Active Faith, Reed writes that "calling gays 'perverts' or announcing that AIDS is 'God's judgment' on the gay community is not consistent with our Christian call to mercy."

Evidently, that redemptive calling has escaped Robertson, who fulminates constantly against gays, especially when he is raising money for the Christian Coalition. He has associated them with Satanists and has suggested that homosexuality is caused by demonic possession. In 1992 he urged resistance against "attempts by the nation's sodomites to force their lifestyle into the schools, the military, the government, businesses and the church." Last January, the coalition's national magazine, Christian American, promoted a book that says "God's condemnation of same-sex perversions is absolute and categorical" and that under biblical law gays and lesbians are "subject to capital punishment.

More broadly, Reed understands that many Americans are troubled by his movement's attitude toward religious domination of government. Lately, he has tried to discredit claims that the religious right, in particular Robertson, might prefer theocracy to democracy. Yet Robertson, despite occasional disavowals, has always been clear about what he means.

While Reed tells everyone who will listen that the Christian Coalition believes in an "inviolable" separation of church and state, Robertson tells The 700 Club's audience, as he did last year, that "there was no concept of separation between God and government in the New Testament or the Old Testament." It is a concept that is alien to the U.S., he said, one that originated in a "phrase from the Soviet Constitution." The televangelist's views seem to have changed little since he told a revival meeting in 1983 that he looked forward to a day when "there is a Spirit-filled president in the White House, and the men in the Senate and the House of Representatives are Spirit-filled and worship Jesus Christ, and the judges do the same thing."

Does Reed share that vision? Robert Boston, who monitors the Christian Coalition for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, regards Reed and Robertson as a "good cop-bad cop" tag team, with Reed as "the hired gun who detracts from criticism by appearing to be reasonable, moderate and sensible. They have disagreements over tactics, not goals." But, then, Reed has been preparing almost 20 years for his role as Robertson's tactician.

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Arriving at a small-town high school in Georgia as a short, skinny Navy brat would have been a depressing experience for most kids. But Ralph, nicknamed Buddy, was the kind of bright, self-motivated boy who takes over in a new situation.

Billing himself as the "little giant"--a bookwormish reference to Stephen Douglas that was probably lost on his classmates--Ralph was elected class president in his junior and senior years. (He talked a math teacher into reprogramming a school computer so that he could mail a campaign letter to every student in the junior class.) He joined the GOP as a student at the University of Georgia, leading the College Republicans and toiling tirelessly in 1980 for Ronald Reagan and Mack Mattingly, Georgia's successful Republican senatorial nominee.

Impressed by Reed's diligence and smarts, Mattingly brought him to Washington in the summer of 1981 for a student internship (which Reed has since misrepresented in coalition literature as a "staff assistant" position). That fall, Reed took a semester off to work for the national College Republicans on Capitol Hill. When he returned to campus, he developed a reputation as a rabid right-winger, thanks in part to a column he wrote during his senior year for the college newspaper, The Red and Black.

In the April 14, 1983 issue Reed wrote a piece excoriating the Oscar-winning movie Gandhi, and labeled India's saintly independence leader as "a quack, a fake, an eccentric and an immoral and manifestly colossal boob . . . the premiere ninny of the 20th century." The name-calling was all Reed's, but an angry letter to the paper the next week from a graduate student in political science detailed the "striking" and "amazing" similarities in Reed's piece and a review in the previous month's edition of the neoconservative magazine Commentary. "It is not up to me to determine if this is plagiarism," the letter said. "A copy of Reed's column has been sent to the editors of Commentary. I'll let them consider it.

The student journalists running The Red and Black were not impressed by Reed's apology for the "oversight" of failing to cite his sources, nor by his insistence that he had consulted several other recent articles (including another by Grenier), nor by his protest that the letter exposing him constituted "the most shocking, profane form of personal attack I can imagine." Announcing that they had found the charges accurate, the editors fired Reed.

This scandal didn't slow Reed's upward mobility among his ideological brethren, who already had elected him president of the state's College Republicans. After graduation, he was hired to run the same organization at the national level, a job that brought him back to Republican headquarters in Washington. As Reed tells it, his unfolding career as GOP apparatchik was interrupted from on high in September 1983. Having lately given up cigarettes and alcohol, he was out on a Saturday night with a bunch of political cronies, sipping soda at a Capitol Hill pub called Bullfeathers, when he had an urge to go back to church. He had been raised a Methodist but had never been devout. The next morning, though, he went to an Evangelical church that he had found in the Yellow Pages.

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Sometime in 1984, the chairman of the College Republicans introduced Reed to Gary Jarmin, legislative director of a group called Christian Voice. Jarmin was regarded with suspicion by some people on the religious right because he was a former disciple of Sun Myung Moon.

But whatever Jarmin's dubious connections, it was he and his fellow Christian Voice colleagues who in 1980 pioneered the political organizing of (continued on page 140)Ralph Reed (continued from page 136) fundamentalist voters, and especially the use of "moral report cards" to target Democratic members of Congress as immoral and un-Christian.

Reed was attracted by the Christian Voice's tough, successful melding of religion and politics and soon became a regular visitor to the group's headquarters in Virginia. He made a point of mentioning his "born-again" experience to Jarmin, who has heard hundreds of such stories and said that Reed "seemed sincere and genuine in his newfound religious commitment." As he recalls, "One day Ralph was in my office and I said, 'What we really need is an organization on campuses to mobilize conservative Christian students.' He thought that was a terrific idea." Here was a way to combine his renewed faith with his conservative zealotry. Within a few months, Reed had raised enough money to set up Students for America as a national organization based in Raleigh, North Carolina, a location convenient to his major political project in 1984--the reelection of ultra-reactionary senator Jesse Helms.

That November, at a Helms victory party, Reed met the woman whom he would later marry. He decided to stay on in Raleigh. But while his professional life was devoted to the mundane tasks of student organizing and electioneering, he was also turning toward more radical forms of Christian activism. According to reports in the Raleigh News and Observer, the leader who sparked a new level of aggression at abortion clinic protests in the Raleigh-Durham area in 1985 was Reed, then only 23 years old. A woman who worked at a clinic where Reed led protests said that the mobs he brought with him resorted to "threatening us, threatening our children, screaming obscenities at patients." On March 18, 1985 Reed was discovered on the same clinic's front porch with Bible in hand. With TV cameras recording the confrontation, he was carried away by the cops.

After his flirtation with civil disobedience in Raleigh, Reed dropped out of sight for a few years to teach history and work on his doctoral dissertation. He faced a crossroads, attracted by both academic life and politics. But in January 1989 he was seated next to Robertson at a Republican inaugural banquet, and his future became clearer. During dinner, Robertson confided his plans for the network of activists his campaign had mobilized. When the banquet ended, Reed recalls, "Pat motioned me to follow him out of the ballroom" to the elevators. "I am going to start a new organization, and I think it will change politics in America. I would like for you to come on staff and help make this vision a reality."

Several months later Reed moved with his wife, Jo Anne, to Chesapeake, Virginia, the center of Robertson's empire (which now includes not only the Christian Broadcasting Network but also a university, a Christian legal institute and various other entwined business and nonprofit enterprises).

Alarmed moderates in the Republican Party talked about fighting back, but there was simply no one with Reed's capability and drive to oppose him. After only three years in the field, Reed and Robertson were in a position to demand considerable tribute from George Bush, the GOP nominee. They named some 300 delegates to the 1992 Republican convention and demanded a speech by Robertson during prime time.

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In the aftermath of Bush's defeat, Reed understood that the aggressive tactics and language of the recent past would have to be toned down. In 1993 he signaled his changing strategy with an essay in the mainstream conservative journal Policy Review. "Casting a Wider Net" caused a stir by arguing for the religious right to broaden its agenda beyond issues such as abortion, pornography, homosexuality and school prayer.

Reed's proposal marked a break with more traditional elements of the religious right. At first their response was muted, but doubts grew when he published a book in 1994 that made the same arguments. The Christian Coalition's role in the Republican victory in 1994 seemed to validate Reed's strategy.

Seeking a clear break with the insular prejudices of his hidebound colleagues, Reed cultivated Catholic clergy and intellectuals, black and Latino preachers and conservative Jewish leaders. Outreach to Jews, a crucial constituency because of their influence in the nation's political and intellectual life, had been complicated by debate over Robertson's conspiracy-haunted book, The New World Order. Around the same time, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, a national Jewish organization that has monitored anti-Semitism for decades, issued a disturbing 200-page report titled The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America, with particular attention paid to the methods and ideology of the Christian Coalition. The ADL report noted that Robertson's book had depicted European bankers as the hidden force behind an ancient plot to rule the world and showed that this classically anti-Semitic imagery had been cribbed from earlier works by notorious anti-Jewish authors.

Reed knew that if the charge of anti-Semitism stuck, the Christian Coalition would be shunned in mainstream politics and the media. Seeking to quiet the controversy, Robertson issued a weak apology for his use of anti-Semitic code words in the book. "I have never intentionally used what some would describe as code words to portray Jewish business interests," he wrote in The New York Times. Reed mobilized Jewish conservatives to denounce the ADL study as an example of "bigotry" toward conservative Christians based on "guilt by association.

The crowning achievement was Time's admiring cover story on Reed in May 1995, in which he was portrayed as seeking "a more inclusive coalition" and struggling "to appear more secular." For the first time, he was treated as a mainstream figure whose statements about himself and his movement need not be subject to skepticism. For example, the Time profile stated flatly that Reed's group "does not coordinate with the National Rifle Association, nor does it lobby on gun issues." Actually, the Christian Coalition has been working in tandem with the NRA since the coalition's early legislative efforts. But by then Reed had learned to tell journalists anything that would encourage them to rubber-stamp his "moderate" credentials.

This past summer he hustled into the spotlight by announcing that the coalition would seek $1 million to help rebuild Southern black churches burned under suspicious circumstances. Intended to remove the stubborn stain of racism from the religious right, this PR gesture won't keep Reed from enthusiastically supporting Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who is the most notorious racist on Capitol Hill.

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Reed effortlessly stays on message, in public at least. On television, behind the podium, in print, he preaches the gospel outlined in his new book Active Faith, proclaiming that "religious conservatives must shun harsh language on critical issues--chiefly abortion, Clinton-bashing and homosexuality--and learn to speak of our opponents with charity. . . . Especially in this election year, we should resist the temptation to identify our religious convictions with the platform of a party or the platitudes of favored politicians. At heart, what America needs is not political revolution but spiritual renewal."

Sometimes, though, Reed speaks in private. This past March, as his book was being prepared for publication, he attended a quarterly meeting in Orlando of the supersecretive Council for National Policy, a by-invitation-only organization of some 500 top figures from the religious and secular far right. The council's aim is to create a power structure that will someday displace the hated Eastern establishment. In the meantime, its members wield considerable influence in the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party. For them, a Dole victory would mean an opportunity they haven't seen since Ronald Reagan's first term: the ability to enact their anti-abortion, antigay, antipornography and protheocracy agenda. Reed was the speaker at the council's Sunday morning prayer breakfast, where he could talk without fear that reporters lurked in the audience. And what he told that ultraconservative crowd was very likely from the heart. But the content of this speech remains a deep secret. Reed and a Christian Coalition spokesman refused to divulge a single word. If you believe it was a moderate, mainstream message, chances are you too have become a victim of Ralph Reed's stealth campaign.

Reed's voter guides said Democrats supported "promoting homosexuality to schoolchildren."

Reed's mobs resorted to "threatening us, threatening our children, screaming obscenities at patients."