Ralph Reed: Living on a Prayer

http://www.alternet.org/story/31875/

Evidence is mounting that former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed
Jr., along with a former leader of the Texas Christian Coalition, may
have illegally lobbied Texas state officials on behalf of crooked
federal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients.

Three Austin-based reform groups -- Common Cause Texas, Public Citizen
Texas and Texans For Public Justice, the latter of which employs the
author of this article -- urged Travis County prosecutors last December
to investigate whether Reed violated Texas' lobby-registration laws
four years ago. Correspondence between Abramoff and Reed -- the
ex-Christian Coalition leader now running for lieutenant governor of
Georgia -- suggests that Reed lobbied Texas officials on behalf of
Abramoff's Indian gambling clients without registering as a Texas
lobbyist. The $5 million in gambling money that Abramoff reportedly
paid Reed for his services would make it one of the largest lobby
contracts ever made public in Texas.

The Reed campaign, which did not respond to three requests for comment
for this story, previously issued a statement saying that Texas' lobby
registration law does not cover the kind of "grassroots" organizing
that Reed's firm conducted in Texas. Travis County Attorney David
Escamilla told the Texas Observer at press time that his office was
still investigating the complaint.

During Jack Abramoff's reign as chair of the College Republican
National Committee in the early 1980s, Ralph Reed and GOP operative
Grover Norquist each did stints as that committee's executive director.
Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, later helped Reed organize the remnants of
evangelist Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential bid into the
politically potent Christian Coalition in 1989. Reed and Norquist
resurfaced a decade later to help Abramoff extract tens of millions of
dollars from Indian gambling interests and other clients. Now Abramoff
has promised to walk federal prosecutors through his vast web of
political corruption, thereby endangering the careers and reputations
of members of Congress, other lobbyists and Ralph Reed -- just as the
preternaturally young-looking evangelist makes his first bid for public
office. These prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Reed but have
not identified him as a target of their investigation.

An Observer investigation reveals that Reed may not have been the only
Christian Coalition leader working secretly for Abramoff's gambling
clients. Reed-Abramoff correspondence indicates that Chuck Anderson,
then-head of the Texas Christian Coalition, also helped lobby Texas
officials on behalf of Abramoff's Indian gaming clients. Anderson, who
now works for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, also appears to have worked on
Texas gambling issues without registering.

Additionally, the Texas Observer has found evidence that Ralph Reed
clandestinely lobbied Texas school officials on behalf of the in-school
television network Channel One in 2002 -- when Channel One's parent
company was paying Abramoff a $320,000 annual retainer. Texas law
generally requires people to register as lobbyists if they receive more
than $500 a quarter to directly communicate with a state official on
public policy. Ralph Reed never registered as a Texas lobbyist despite
evidence that he called at least one member of the State Board of
Education in 2002 to influence a board resolution.

In 2002, the Texas State Board of Education considered passing a
nonbinding resolution to urge schools to ban Channel One from their
campuses. Liberal opponents of in-school, commercial television
included Texans for Public Justice and Commercial Alert, an
Oregon-based Naderite group that opposes commercial exploitation of
children. Conservative opponents of Channel One included Alabama-based
Obligation Inc., which mirrors Commercial Alert's agenda and the Texas
Eagle Forum. All of these groups objected to public schools using
teaching time to expose captive children to ads, especially those
promoting junk food or violent films. To make this case,
Birmingham-based Obligation Inc. showed the conservative-dominated
board a sampling of Channel One's own ads.

Channel One responded by flying CEO Jim Ritts, a University of Texas
alum, to Austin to help local company lobbyist Demetrius McDaniel of
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. These Channel One representatives,
neither of whom responded to requests for comment, had their own video
that included an apparent endorsement of the company by First Lady
Laura Bush. In the end, the board dropped the resolution against
Channel One and passed a weak substitute that urged PTA types to
educate themselves about marketing in schools.

There is evidence that Ralph Reed contributed to this Channel One
lobbying coup behind the scenes. A brief Austin American-Statesman
article in September 2002 reported that Channel One postponed a vote on
the resolution thanks to "an impromptu lobbying effort by Channel One
Communications -- including phone calls from Ralph Reed." Indeed,
Channel One critic Gary Ruskin, of Commercial Alert, continues to blame
Reed's lobbying for ensuring that "Texas school children are still
forced to watch ads for junk food, violent entertainment and movies
that portray smoking."

When the Channel One resolution came before the board, 10 of its 15
members had at least one thing in common with Ralph Reed: a Republican
Party affiliation. One Republican board member, Dan Montgomery,
R-Fredericksburg, told the Observer that he was present when then-board
member Chase Untermeyer, R-Houston, took a call from Ralph Reed. "He
said it was Ralph Reed calling on behalf of Channel One," and he was
somewhat surprised, Montgomery recalls. Montgomery added that he does
not think Reed's intervention influenced the board's vote on the
resolution. Untermeyer is now the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar. Another
board member, David Bradley of Beaumont, declined to say if Reed had
contacted him, telling the Observer, "I cannot help you." Asked if this
meant that Reed never contacted him, Bradley repeated, "Sir, I cannot
help you."

Six of the 10 GOP members who sat on the board in 2002 said that Ralph
Reed never contacted them (Don McLeroy, Dan Montgomery, Grace Shore,
Judy Strickland, Cynthia Thornton and Richard Watson). Ambassador
Untermeyer and current board Chair Geraldine Miller did not return
repeated requests for comment. Former GOP board member Richard Neill
could not be located.

Several Republicans who sat on the board at that time expressed
disappointment with Reed's involvement. "I always really liked Ralph
Reed," said Texas Eagle Forum activist Judy Strickland, who, as a state
school board member in 2002, sponsored the failed Channel One
resolution. "But when people use our children for their gains --
monetarily or otherwise -- they need to be called on the carpet." "I am
surprised that the Christian Coalition would support that kind of
endeavor (Channel One)," added board member Cynthia Thornton. "There
was programming [on Channel One] that I wouldn't allow in my
classroom."

Reed appears to have engaged in just the kind of paid, direct contact
with public officials that drives Texas' lobby-registration law. In
fact, Reed long has prided himself on his ninja stealth. "I want to be
invisible," he told Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot as the leader of the
Christian Coalition in 1991. "I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face
and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body
bag."

When it comes to lobbying, Reed has mastered stealth. The state ethics
commission websites in Texas and Georgia, where Reed's Century
Strategies lobby shop is based, list no lobby registrations for this
operative. The only federal lobby registration listed for Reed is as a
Christian Coalition lobbyist in 1998.

Conservative Channel One critic Jim Metrock of Obligation Inc. said
that Reed resorted to covert tactics in Alabama in 1999, when a
Primedia front group popped up that ultimately was traced back to Reed.
This so-called Coalition to Protect Children churned out advertisements
in a failed effort to stop U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., from
holding Channel One hearings. Reed "hurt the Christian Coalition in
Alabama," Metrock said. "People really believed in him."

Reed's policy work in Texas assumed greater significance this past Jan.
3, when Abramoff pled guilty to three felonies in a plea bargain with
federal prosecutors investigating a vast web of political corruption.
At the time of the Texas Channel One vote in 2002, Abramoff's Greenberg
Traurig was Primedia's top federal lobby firm, billing Primedia and a
subsidiary $380,000 that year. Other Greenberg Traurig lobbyists on the
Primedia account included Tony Rudy and Neil Volz, who previously
worked for two of Abramoff's closest congressional cronies: Texas Rep.
Tom DeLay and Ohio Rep. Bob Ney, respectively. Rudy and Volz figure
prominently in the Abramoff indictment.

Abramoff alleges in his plea deal that soon after he hired Rep. Ney's
aide Neil Volz, Volz contacted his old boss to help one of Abramoff's
clients land a lucrative federal telecommunications contract. The
indictment alleges that this action violated a revolving-door law that
bars certain federal officials from lobbying their old offices for one
year.

Abramoff also told prosecutors that he paid the wife of then-DeLay aide
Tony Rudy $50,000 as a reward for Rudy using DeLay's office to help
Abramoff kill legislation. The Washington Post reported last fall, for
example, that Rudy helped snuff the 2000 Internet Gambling Prohibition
Act, which would have hurt Abramoff's client, eLottery Inc. eLottery
also paid Reed $300,000 to work this contract, the Post reported,
routing some of the payments through Grover Norquist and the
Virginia-based Faith and Family Alliance. The director of the Alliance
at the time, Robin Vanderwall -- now imprisoned for soliciting sex with
minors on the internet -- told the Post that Reed's firm directed him
to pass the money on to Century Strategies.

A Reed spokesperson told the Post that Abramoff had promised Century
Strategies that it would not be paid with gambling funds. In a 1999
email to Reed, however, Abramoff explicitly identified a casino-owning
tribe as the paying client. "[G]et me invoices as soon as possible so I
can get Choctaw to get us checks ASAP," Abramoff wrote. Moreover, if
Reed was as innocent as he would have us believe, he surely must have
wondered why his payments were routed through Byzantine channels. In
one example of this shell game in March 2001, Abramoff explained to an
anxious Reed why one of his payments was delayed. "The originating
entity had to transfer to a separate account before they transferred to
the entity which is going to transfer to you," Abramoff explained. "All
will be fine." Standard ninja operating procedure.

Just as he enlisted Abramoff to get the Christian Coalition off the
ground, Reed turned to his friend to help him start a lobby shop after
he left the Coalition in 1997. "I need to start humping in corporate
accounts," Reed wrote Abramoff in 1998. "I'm counting on you to help me
with some contacts."

Reed had left the Christian Coalition under fire. At that time the IRS
and the Federal Election Commission were investigating the Coalition,
even as the Coalition's chief financial officer accused Reed of
awarding inflated contracts to a crony. When the IRS revoked the
Coalition's tax-exempt status in 1999 -- owing to overtly political
activities -- the national group transferred its remaining assets to
the Texas Christian Coalition. This Texas chapter was headed by
then-Executive Director Chuck Anderson, who appears to have helped
Abramoff, Norquist and Reed implement their Texas gambling agenda in
2001. Like Reed, Anderson did not register as a Texas lobbyist.

In 2001, legally questionable Texas casinos operated by the Tigua tribe
in El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe in Livingston competed with
tribal gambling operations in Louisiana. East Texas' Alabama-Coushatta
lacked the autonomy that comes with formal federal recognition, making
them subject to a state law prohibiting casino gambling. The Tiguas did
obtain federal recognition in 1987, but only after they mollified
critics by pledging to obey Texas gaming laws. The Tiguas later argued
that Texas cleared the way for a tribal casino in 1991, when voters
approved racetracks and a state lottery. The courts ultimately shot
down the tribe's legal theory. Facing legal threats from then-Attorney
General John Cornyn, who soon would persuade the courts to shut down
these casinos, the Texas-based tribes backed state legislation to
legalize their casinos. Killing this bill (House Bill 514) was a top
objective of the rival Louisiana-Coushatta tribe, which paid Abramoff's
lobby firm $1.8 million in 2001. Abramoff-Reed correspondence reveals
that Abramoff paid Reed to work on this effort. As he previously did
for Channel One in Alabama, Reed created a front group to run attack
ads against this gambling legislation. Last year the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution reported that Reed secretly hired Houston lobbyist
Andrew Biar to create this so-called Committee Against Gambling
Expansion.

Abramoff-Reed emails also suggest that Reed and his shop may have
engaged in the kind of paid contact with Texas officials that can
trigger a legal obligation to register as a lobbyist. In a January 2002
email exchange discussing then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn's
litigation to shut down the Tiguas' casino, Reed assured Abramoff that,
"we are discussing this with the head of the [attorney general's]
criminal division today."

Perhaps illustrating how toxic Abramoff's name has become, the Observer
could not find anyone who would admit to being deputy attorney general
of criminal justice in January 2002. The preponderance of evidence
points to Michael McCaul, who was elected in 2004 to represent one of
Tom DeLay's newly minted congressional districts. Yet Rep. McCaul's
spokesperson said that his boss had been replaced by that time by Shane
Phelps, a one-time opponent of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie
Earle. Now a Brazos County prosecutor, Phelps told the Observer that
McCaul succeeded Phelps in that post, not vice versa. The Observer then
found a December 2002 attorney general release announcing the
replacement of "acting Deputy for Criminal Justice" Don Clemmer, who
had served in that post "since Michael McCaul joined the U.S.
Attorney's for the Western District of Texas." A spokesperson for the
U.S. Attorney said that McCaul joined that federal office in October
200 -- nine months after Reed's team reportedly met with Cornyn's
deputy attorney general. At press time, a spokesman for Rep. McCaul
called and admitted that the congressman in fact had been the deputy
attorney general at the time but had "never had any contact with" Ralph
Reed, Century Strategies, or the Texas or national Christian Coalition.

In another January 2002 message Abramoff directed Reed to recruit
cooperative Texas and Alabama lawmakers, dubbed "tigers," to introduce
legislation that would exclude companies that do business with Indian
casinos from state contracting. "Easy to get our tigers to introduce
them (bills) in both places," Reed responds. What such correspondence
fails to establish, however, is whether Reed and Century Strategies
directly lobbied Texas officials, as the emails suggest, or if Reed was
bearing false witness to rationalize millions of dollars in gambling
fees.

The emails also indicate that Abramoff and Reed relied on then-Texas
Christian Coalition leader Chuck Anderson to help defeat the
casino-legalization legislation. Reed reports to Abramoff in a March
2001 email on efforts to kill the bill by bottling it up in a House
committee. "Chuck Anderson at the Coalition is calling Rep. Kim Brimer
and other members of the Calendars Committee," he writes. Reed adds
that he could flood the committee with phone calls if the client would
approve Reed's $397,200 "Texas Anti-Gambling Project Budget."

In an update several days later, Reed tells Abramoff, "You are waiting
to hear from Chuck" about whether Gov. Rick Perry would signal his
intention to veto the gambling bill. (Perry generally opposed gambling
until he returned from a 2004 Bahamas junket with GOP powerbrokers,
including Abramoff-Reed crony Grover Norquist. Governor Perry then
proposed using slot machines to finance Texas schools.)

A triumphant April 6, 2001, email from Reed to Abramoff appears under
the heading "from a TX operative," suggesting that Reed may have
forwarded this message from a Texas colleague. "Yesterday we succeeded
in keeping HB 514, the Indian Casino bill, bottled up in the Calendars
Committee," the message reads. "According to Chuck at the Texas
Christian Coalition, he has received many calls from offices of the
committee members. We patched through 4,000 phone calls between Friday
and Thursday, blitzed Christian and conservative talk radio, and mailed
50,000 anti-gambling action alerts." Less than two weeks later, on
April 18, the Texas Christian Coalition announced Anderson's
resignation.

One reading of the Abramoff-Reed correspondence suggests that, under
Anderson, the Texas Christian Coalition operated as an arm of Reed's
Century Strategies. It is unclear if the Texas Christian Coalition or
Anderson were paid for this work, a key factor in determining if
Anderson was required to register as a lobbyist. Asked about the
Abramoff-Reed correspondence, Anderson -- now a spokesperson for Lt.
Gov. David Dewhurst's re-election campaign -- said, "I am not going to
have any comment at this time."

Texas requires political operatives to register as lobbyists if they:
spend more than $500 a quarter directly communicating with a state
official to influence state policies, or receive more than $1,000 a
quarter for such communications (unless less than 5 percent of a
person's total compensated time is spent on such lobbying). Violating
this law is a misdemeanor subject to up to a year in jail and a civil
fine of up to three times an individual's lobby compensation.

In Reed's case, such a fine could be huge. He reportedly received as
much as $4 million just to help the Louisiana-Coushatta shut down the
Tigua casino in El Paso. To Reed's advantage, Texas lobby-registration
laws are subject to a two-year statute of limitations. Invoking a legal
theory called "tolling," the groups that filed the Reed complaint argue
that this two-year period should not be clocked from when the alleged
lobbying occurred in 2001, since the public was unaware of the alleged
offense as a direct result of Reed's failure to register. Instead, the
complainants argue that the two-year limit should be clocked from late
2004, when the U.S. Senate first revealed Reed's advocacy in Texas.

The Reed campaign said in a written response to the complaint that
Greenberg Traurig hired it "to contact grassroots citizens in Texas and
encourage them to oppose illegal casinos in the state," activities that
it said did not require lobby registration. The statement said that the
"specious" complaint "has more to do with politics than the facts."
Complainant Suzy Woodford of Common Cause countered that Reed's "own
correspondence appears to indict him" by suggesting that he directly
lobbied Texas officials. In one such direct-contact reference during
the casino-legalization fight in early 2001, an apparent Century
Strategies memo says, "Eric Criss, Century Strategies VP, is flying to
Texas on Monday morning to meet with the staff of the governor and
attorney general, as well as the Christian Coalition Executive Director
[Chuck Anderson] and Director of Public Policy for the Baptist State
Convention of Texas." Criss, now an unregistered staff lobbyist for
Home Depot in Washington, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Gambling opponent Suzii Paynter, the Baptist lobbyist whom Criss
reportedly was going to meet in 2001, did visit the attorney general's
office that year. Yet Paynter told the Observer, "I was never in
contact with or had meetings with Eric Criss of Century Strategies."
Paynter said Abramoff and Reed sometimes appeared to rationalize their
extravagant fees by claiming credit for things they never did.

Ralph Reed has declined to discuss his work on Texas gambling issues
with the media personally. One week after the lobby complaint was
filed, he told a Christian youth group that he had been aware that
Greenberg Traurig's tribal clients "had their own reasons for opposing
new casinos." Reed added in his defense that, "I was assured by the law
firm ... that the funds contributed to our efforts would not derive
from gambling activity."

In this case, either Ralph Reed lied about his knowledge of who was
paying his bills, Abramoff's lobby firm lied, or they both
prevaricated. As prosecutors continue to investigate the roles that
DeLay, Ney, Reed and other politicians played in the mushrooming
Abramoff scandal, voters -- and perhaps even jurors -- will get a
formal chance to decide whom they believe.

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"I did not have *****-fucking relations with Jack Abramoff" - George W. Bush