Ralph Reed (Satan's Altar Boy) is Running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia!
Rather than learning their lesson and backing down, the Radical Right feels that now that they have rallied their troops, it is time to press on with their campaign. They've lost a battle, but see it as instrumental to winning the war (on the reality-based community)
Christian rightist seeks Georgia office
Paul West, Baltimore Sun
Sunday, March 27, 2005
"Still baby-faced at 43, and with few gray strands on his neatly coifed head, Reed is putting together a statewide campaign on behalf of a candidate who has never run for public office before: himself."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/27/MNGMTBUDAN1.DTL
Duluth , Ga. -- Over the years, Ralph Reed has built an extraordinarily successful career as political organizer and campaign strategist.
Almost single-handedly, as executive director of the Christian Coalition in the late 1980s and 1990s, he turned religious conservatives into a powerful force within the Republican Party. More recently, he was Southern chairman of President Bush's re-election drive.
Now, he's making a midlife course change. Still baby-faced at 43, and with few gray strands on his neatly coifed head, Reed is putting together a statewide campaign on behalf of a candidate who has never run for public office before: himself.
This week, he formally kicks off his bid for lieutenant governor of Georgia, a largely ceremonial job often dismissed with the phrase "light governor."
Campaigns for lieutenant governor seldom attract much attention. But Reed's could well become the most closely watched ever.
It will probably animate a wide spectrum of political forces, from conservatives eager to give him a lift to liberals intent on stopping him.
"I'm going to talk about Georgia, and they're going to talk about me," Reed said with a loud chuckle during an interview at his office in this fast- growing Atlanta suburb.
He plans to recruit 25,000 volunteers and run on an agenda of "reform and values and change," he said, while letting others run the campaign. "I'm the candidate. I'm not the manager."
No prominent figure in either party has announced plans to take Reed on, and state politicians give him an excellent chance of winning. If so, he'd be well positioned to run for governor in 2010.
"Most people who run for lieutenant governor don't want to be lieutenant governor for long," said Keith Mason, an Atlanta lawyer and former Clinton White House official. Like some other well-connected Georgia Democrats, he considers Reed a personal friend, though he won't be involved in his campaign.
Reed "will be a formidable force. He'll raise a lot of money. He certainly knows how to organize, and he's an articulate spokesman for his views," said Mason.
Back in college, Reed and Mason worked together as interns in the lieutenant governor's office when it was held by Zell Miller, a Democrat who, in 2004, became one of Bush's most prominent supporters.
The internship in Miller's office, which lasted only a few months, has "probably taken on a lot more prominence on (Reed's) resume in the last few years," remarked Mason, referring to Miller's unlikely emergence as a Republican hero in the twilight of his career.
In a letter to supporters last month announcing his candidacy, Reed referred to his student internship in Miller's office, which taught him, he said, "the legislative process in the state Senate," where the lieutenant governor presides.
For the first time since Reconstruction, the Republicans control both houses of the state Legislature. But despite Reed's national celebrity, he's regarded as an outsider at the Georgia Capitol, even by legislators from his own party, which he headed for several years as state chairman.
His decision to step from behind the scenes and run for office is a rarity for a modern campaign consultant, particularly one who has attracted numerous critics. For the past eight years, Reed has headed a consulting firm whose political and corporate clients have included Enron Corp. (in 2003, the Federal Election Commission said it found no reason to believe that the roughly $300,000 the company paid to Reed from 1997 to 2001 was actually a covert contribution to benefit Bush's presidential candidacy, as alleged in a formal complaint by Judicial Watch).
Few, if any, who know Reed are surprised that his ambitions have led him to become a candidate. They see it as the latest stage of a long-range strategy to gain wider acceptance as a public figure, which began with his successful campaign for state party chairman in 2001.
"This lieutenant governor job is merely the launching pad that he would hope would eventually take him to the White House," said Marshall Wittmann, who was Reed's legislative director at the Christian Coalition.
Wittmann, a critic now at the Democratic Leadership Council, says it would be a mistake to sell his former boss short.
"There are very few people who are as smart, ambitious and ruthless as Ralph," he said.
Referring to Reed's reputation for practicing stealthy politics, Wittmann pointed to an oft-repeated quote, from a 1991 interview with a Virginia newspaper, in which Reed described himself this way: "I want to be invisible. 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."
In recent months, Reed has been linked to the latest Washington scandal, an audacious scheme by a pair of Republican power brokers who received about $80 million in fees from Indian tribes with casino interests, according to a Senate committee that has held two public hearings on the matter and continues to investigate. About $4 million of the tribal money secretly went to Reed, though there has been no indication that he is a target of an ongoing criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
Reed has denied knowing that the money he was paid came from casino-rich tribes.
A focus of the probe, Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist hired by the tribes, has been one of Reed's close friends and mentors.
Between 2001 and 2003, Reed's firm, Century Strategies, was paid $4.2 million, under an arrangement with Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon to conduct a campaign to help shut down a casino operated by a Texas tribe. At the time, Abramoff and Scanlon were being paid millions by other tribes with casinos in nearby states that wanted to reduce competition by seeing to it that the Texas casino was shuttered.
Reed, who had previously crusaded against the expansion of casino gambling as part of his work with religious conservatives, recruited evangelical leader James Dobson and Texas ministers in the ultimately successful effort to close the Texas casino.
In the interview, Reed declined to discuss the investigation. In a prepared statement, he has said he had "no direct knowledge" that Abramoff's law firm was representing casino interests at the time. Reed has acknowledged that he was aware that his friend's firm had represented tribal clients.
What impact, if any, the issue might have on Reed's candidacy isn't clear.
Sadie Fields, who heads the Christian Coalition in Georgia, called Reed "very valuable to the agenda" of her organization, which maintains a database of almost a quarter-million "pro-family, pro-life voters" in the state.
"As far as I know," Fields said, Reed "tried to shut down casino gambling" in Texas.
"I don't know all of the details," she acknowledged. "What I do know is that Ralph continues to represent our values. He's a trusted ally."
