Questioning Reed’s Deeds: Religious Right Powerbroker Sued By Texas Tribe
Ralph Reed, one of the Religious Right’s most successful political organizers and fundraisers, is having a difficult time escaping his relationship with one of the nation’s most infamous lobbyists Jack Abramoff.
The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Reed and Abramoff charging them with being the driving forces behind the demise of the Native American tribe’s Texas gambling casino.
As it has been widely reported, Reed was hired by Abramoff to help foment a statewide effort to restrict gambling in Texas. The tribe’s lawsuit alleges that Abramoff brazenly used Reed’s towering status as a Religious Right powerbroker to fuel an anti-casino moral crusade in the Lone Star State. And what has also been uncovered and publicly reported is that Abramoff hired Reed at the behest of an Indian tribe in Louisiana that was seeking to protect its highly successful gambling interests.
The Texas Indian tribe’s lawsuit, as reported in The New York Times today, states that, “This case chronicles Jack Abramoff and his associates’ greed, corruption and deceit and their devastating impact on Texas’s oldest recognized Indian tribe.”
Reed has tried mightily to ignore media inquires into his association with convicted lobbyist Abramoff. A correspondent for GQ magazine, in a lengthy and devastating critique of Reed’s career, wrote that Reed refuses to do interviews with publications from outside of Georgia.
GQ correspondent Sean Flynn said Reed “hasn’t given an on-the-record quote of any substance to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in six months, and he hasn’t granted a serious interview to any paper big enough to have a Nexis account [one of the world's largest depositories of media, academic and legal information].”
Yesterday, however, Reed’s spokeswoman was forced to acknowledge the Indian tribe’s federal lawsuit. Reed has said that he accepted money from Abramoff, but maintains that his work to spark a religious campaign against gambling in Texas was transparent and even noble.
Reed’s spokeswoman, Lisa Baron, told the Times that, “As a longtime opponent of casino gambling, Ralph was happy to work with Texas pro-family citizens to close it.”
The Washington Post and other media outlets have released e-mails between Abramoff and Reed showing that Abramoff was not circumspect about where the millions of dollars to pay Reed would emanate from. According to the Post, Reed received “as much as 4 million” from the Louisiana tribe. In a July 12 column for the Arizona Star Daily, Garrison Keillor notes that in one e-mail, Abramoff informs Reed that he would get compensated “as soon as the Coushattas send in the money.”
Since departing TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition in the late 1990s, Reed has run a highly successful consulting career – not only working to elect social conservatives to public office, but also to assist Microsoft, Enron and an array of other private businesses, like the Louisiana gambling casino. Reed, who has tarred gambling as a blight on American society and continues to style himself as defender of so-called “family values,” is finding it more and more difficult to come clean.