Religious Right's Ralph Reed Field-Tests Plan for Beating Obama

Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, "a 21st-century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids," is leading the effort.

July 9, 2012 |

Photo Credit: A.M. Stan

UPDATE - October 15, 2012: This article details the contents of a packet that was distributed during a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C., on June 16, 2012, containing materials bearing the name and logo of Millennium Marketing, a subsidiary of Century Strategies, a for-profit political consulting firm of which Ralph Reed is chief executive officer. Reed is also the president of the non-profit Faith and Freedom Coalition.

During the last week of September, attorneys for Ralph Reed and Millennium Marketing contacted AlterNet and author Adele Stan in a letter denying any payment to Millennium Marketing by Faith and Freedom Coalition “for any work,” and denying that Millennium Marketing provided the services to Faith and Freedom Coalition that are described in the packet, which was distributed by Rick Furr of the Mobile Sports Group at the conclusion of a breakout session titled “Champion the Vote.” In the letter, Reed’s attorney also threatened to bring a lawsuit against AlterNet.

The packet passed out by Furr also included a business card bearing the Millennium Marketing; beneath Furr’s name, the title “Executive Director” appears.

The letter was the first response AlterNet received to a request for comment made to Reed in a phone call to his Century Strategies office on June 29, 2012.

Furr, according to J. Randolph Evans of the McKenna, Long & Aldridge law firm, which represents Millennium and Reed, was not authorized to use the Millennium Marketing name or logo on the materials he distributed; Evans also provided AlterNet with a letter signed by Furr and Scott Foernsler of LSN Mobile, in which they apologize for having done so, and state that Millennium Marketing played no role in the services provided by LSN Mobile and Mobile Sports Group to Faith and Freedom Coalition for its voter turnout efforts during Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall election, despite assertions made in packet materials that it had.

We note that Faith and Freedom Coalition’s own national field director, Billy Kirkland, confirmed to Stan in a June 29 phone call that FFC had “used” Millennium Marketing in Wisconsin where, he said, “they were a big help.”

The letter signed by Furr and Foernsler contains the following paragraph:

Millennium Marketing has received no compensation from LSN or MSG for work done on behalf of FFC or any of our other clients. We were not authorized to circulate materials bearing Millennium Marketing’s name and logo, or to represent during the seminar that Millennium Marketing was involved in FFC voter contact programs undertaken by LSN or MSG. It was not and is not. Similarly, we apologize for circulating materials during the seminar that included an endorsement of LSN’s or MSG’s work product by FFC or its employees when such an endorsement was not approved.

We have updated this article to include the new information provided to us by McKenna, Long & Aldridge, and adjusted any language that might be misinterpreted as a definitive statement that Reed or Millennium Marketing had reaped profits from the Faith and Freedom Coalition -- a claim we never made. We continue to stand by our reporting.

A mere 10 days since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Lieutenant Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch survived the recall election launched against them by state's liberal coalition, Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is ebullient as he takes the stage at his organization's Washington, D.C., gala on the final night of FFC's national conference at the Renaissance Hotel.

Reed has good reason to be happy; his return to the religious-right spotlight is a turn of events that few would have bet on. Since he first burst on the political scene in the 1990s as the wunderkind executive director of Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Reed's political trajectory took him so close to the sun that his wings nearly melted. When George W. Bush signed him as a strategist for the 2000 presidential campaign, Reed's career soared -- only to crash four years later with revelations of his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Along the way, he made a lot of money, and is reported to live with his wife and two of his four children (the other two are grown) in a house in Duluth, Ga., worth $2.2 million .