Ralph Reed: Living on a Prayer

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.