The Virginia Republican Party has really taken it on the chin in recent years--they've lost two gubernatorial races in a row, and have lost seats in both houses of the legislature in the last two cycles. Now the Repubs are looking to a star candidate for a State Senate seat in northern Virginia--
Darrell Green.
Former Washington Redskins cornerback Darrell R. Green is being urged to run for the state Senate from Loudoun County next year by leading Northern Virginia Republicans who hope he can use his fame on the football field to oust newly elected Democrat Mark R. Herring.
Green, one of the most well-known Redskins from the team's recent golden era, lives in Loudoun and has been running a nonprofit foundation since he left the team three years ago.
Green is being courted for a Senate seat that we picked up in a special election earlier this year. However, there are questions about his nonprofit foundation that could be used as a way to head this run off at the pass.
Since 1988, Green has headed the
Darrell Green Youth Life Foundation, which runs four learning centers across the country. Youth Life has become one of the crown jewels of this administration's reliance on "faith-based initiatives."
However, Youth Life got over $3 million in congressional earmarks from 2001 to 2003. At the time, it only served a total of 74 kids, according to a July 2003 article in Youth Today. Other centers serve more kids for far less money. More seriously, in a brochure announcing plans for 11 more centers by 2009, Youth Life used stock photos rather than pictures from his flagship youth center. Also, Green frequently plays up "ghetto" stereotypes when appealing for support. In fact, most of the residents at the apartment complex where his flagship center is based have jobs and live decently.
The Youth Life Foundation also has very close ties to Every Nation, a network of charismatic churches. For all intents and purposes, Every Nation is a revival of Maranatha Campus Ministries, one of the more notorious "campus cults" of the 1980s. Green has been a member of one of Every Nation's most prominent churches, Metro Morningstar Church in Sterling, since the mid-80s. That church grew out of Maranatha's outreaches to college campuses in the DC area. For those who don't know, I was suckered into joining a campus outreach of one of Every Nation's churches while I was at Carolina--and I can tell you that Every Nation is as much a cult as Maranatha was. So I have to wonder what kind of stuff Green is turning these kids' heads with.