Reed, Ralph 1961-

Ralph Reed
1961-

Executive director, christiancoalition

Young Conserative

Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, the son of a Naval physician, Ralph Reed became fascinated by politics as a student at Cutler Ridge Junior High School near Miami when he ran for class president. As a student at the University of Georgia, he joined the College Republicans and served an extended internship as a Senate aide in 1980-1981. In 1983 he became president of the National College Republicans. He was also "born again, both politically and religiously. As a campus politician, he had earned a reputation for ruthlessness that he came to regret and later apologized to some of his earlier opponents. He earned a Ph.D. in American History at Emory University shortly before joining the Christian Coalition.

Political Strategist of the Religious Right

Ralph Reed served as executive director of the Christian Coalition from 1989 until 1997. He had previously been the executive director of the College Republican National Committee (1982-1984) and a political organizer for Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina). During his eight years with the Christian Coalition he reached beyond the conservative Protestant base of the Christian Right to include socially conservative Catholics and Jews and addressed issues of tax and welfare reform, poverty, drug abuse, and racial reconciliation. He also wrote two books, Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics (1994) and Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (1996), and was a contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review, as well as a frequent guest on television talk shows. In 1994 Time called him "the single most important strategist for the religious right."

New Directions

The Christian Coalition was established by Pat Robertson in 1989, the year following his failed bid for the presidency of the United States. Robertson had many other ventures as well, such as running the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and the Family Channel, as well as hosting the 700 Club, which had seven million viewers in the 1990s, so he chose Reed to head the Coalition. Reed was given five basic goals: to represent Christians and their concerns at every political level, train them to be effective in the political arena, inform them of issues and legislation of particular concern, speak out publicly on religious issues, and protest discrimination against Christians and defend their legal rights. None of these concerns were new to politically active Christians; the "New Religious Right" had been old news for years by the time Reed, still in his twenties, became Executive Director. Nevertheless, he put a new face on conservative evangelical political activism. He attempted to make it mainstream, focusing on what he, and others, called "pro-family" stances rather than specifically Christian ones and making efforts to broaden the white Protestant image of the movement. He also muted the antagonistic rhetoric often used by other religious conservatives such as Patrick J. Buchanan. When he announced the release of the "Contract with the American Family" on 17 May 1995, Reed said, "This agenda is not a Christian agenda, a Republican agenda, or a special interest agenda. It is a pro-family agenda that is embraced by the American people, Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, Protestant and Catholic." At its height, the Coalition claimed an active membership of 1.9 million, with affiliates in every state, although others suggested that it was claiming as "active members" anyone who had ever made a donation.

Work at the Grassroots

Reed brought great organizing skills and a strong practical approach to the issues that interested conservative Christians. He understood the political process: targeting low-profile elections at first, building a grassroots base, and concentrating on urging conservative churches to get their members to the voting booths. He oversaw the running of hundreds of training seminars for Coalition volunteers on political organizing and communication. As the Coalition grew, he became a power broker on much grander levels. Reed and the Coalition took credit for the success of the Republican midterm sweep in 1994. This victory made Reed a powerful figure at the Republican National Convention in 1996, where he was instrumental in keeping a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion as part of the platform, even though many in the Party, including its nominee, Senator Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole (R-Kansas), disliked taking an extreme position on such a divisive issue.

Voting Guides

A key element of Coalition tactics was the voter guides that were sent out to churches. These guides rated candidates according to their statements and voting records on the issues that the Coalition considered to be most important, such as the establishment of prayer in schools; the denial of government funding to medical facilities performing abortions and to the National Endowment for the Arts; the outlawing of all abortions; and vouchers or tax relief for private school tuition. According to the Coalition, forty million of these guides were sent out for the national elections in 1992 and thirty-four million in 1994. These pamphlets caused much trouble for the Coalition. In 1996 the Federal Election Commission (FEC) filed suit against the Coalition on the grounds that the supposedly nonpartisan voter guides actually endorsed candidates (mostly Republican), creating $1.4 million in illegal campaign contributions; the FEC also claimed that the Coalition had worked with Republican campaigns. On 1 August 1999 District of Columbia Federal Court Judge Joyce Hens Green dismissed most of the charges because the federal campaign-spending laws were so vague. She upheld only two of the FEC contentions, saying that Coalition involvement in the 1994 campaign of Representative Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-Georgia), as well as Oliver North's run for the U.S. Senate seat from Virginia, had been illegal. This victory was offset in the same year by the denial of tax-exempt status to the Coalition by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which was not only an economic problem for Reed's group but also raised the concern that churches using the voter guides could imperil their tax-exempt status.

Century Strategies

Reed resigned from the Christian Coalition on 23 April 1997, after the FEC suit was filed but before it was resolved. He said he wanted to be able to work more closely with the Republican Party and to that end formed his own political consulting agency, Century Strategies. The two men who replaced him at the Coalition, Donald P. Hodel as president and Randy J. Tate as executive director, each lasted less than a year in those positions. Reed was a popular consultant and ended the century working as an adviser to the George W. Bush presidential campaign.

Sources:

David van Biema, "A New Generation of Leaders," Time, 144 (5 December 1994): 48-67.

Stephen Glass, "After the Fall" New Republic, 216 (19 May 1997): 14-16.

Bill Miller and Susan B. Glasser, "A Victory for Christian Coalition," Washington Post, 3 August 1999.

Ralph Reed, "Statement on the Occasion of the Release of the Contract with the American Family," 17 May 1995.