Ralph Reed has embarked on a new career path – as a novelist.
When we last heard from Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition executive director turned political consultant was running for lieutenant governor of Georgia.
Ralph had it all planned – four years in the lieutenant governor’s office, then governor. After that, he could run for U.S. Senate or maybe even seek the White House. The political road ahead looked smooth for TV preacher Pat Robertson’s former front man.
But sometimes unseen potholes force a change of course. In Reed’s case, the pothole was named “Jack Abramoff.” Reed had worked alongside the disgraced lobbyist, and during the campaign, a series of embarrassing e-mails surfaced. (My favorite was the charming 1998 message in which Reed wrote to Abramoff, “I need to start humping in corporate accounts. I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.”)
It was quite a mess. And Reed, who had been riding high in the polls, crashed and burned. After a public opinion survey was released showing Reed dragging down the entire Republican ticket in the state, GOP leaders quickly lost interest in his candidacy. On primary election day, Georgia State Sen. Casey Cagle trounced Reed by 12 points and is now lieutenant governor.
His political hopes dashed, Reed has embarked on a new career path – as a novelist. Reed’s first work of fiction, Dark Horse, was released last week. It is described as a political thriller about an independent candidate seeking the White House.
Actually, I’m hesitant to call Dark Horse Reed’s first work of fiction. I remember the glory days of the Christian Coalition when Ralph claimed the organization had two million members. Americans United used postal records to prove the group’s membership was never above 415,000 and a good bit lower in many years.
In another instance, Reed arranged for Christian Coalition employees to play a type of leapfrog, moving from office to office so a visiting television crew would get the impression of a workplace bustling with activity. He’s nothing if not creative.
But Reed’s greatest work of fiction had to be the “voter guides” cranked out every election year by the Christian Coalition. The guides were always stacked to make the Coalition’s favored candidates (always right-wing Republicans) look like saints and their opponents like sinners. It took some serious creative license to pull that off in some cases, but Reed always came through.
The guides were supposedly “non-partisan,” but that was a joke. They were essentially GOP campaign material. In fact, Reed got his first batch of guides into print with a $64,000 grant from the Republican Senatorial Committee.
At a closed-door meeting of Coalition activists in 1991, Reed boasted that Jesse Helms had called Robertson in 1990 and asked for help in a tough reelection campaign. Robertson subsequently instructed Reed to use the guides to help Helms. When the Federal Election Commission later raised questions about the matter, Reed told reporters he had no memory of Helms asking Robertson for help.
Reed’s book has been lauded by right-wing luminaries like Sean Hannity and Robert Novack. Karl Rove raves, “You won’t be able to put it down.” As of today, it’s ranked about 5,000 on Amazon.com, but I noted that only one person has bothered to review it.
Reed’s not exactly doing an extensive book tour, either. His Web site lists two appearances in Georgia, one of which was last month. (On the site, you can watch a You Tube video of a smiling Reed plugging the book. He still looks like a frat boy. Reed and I are about the same age, and I have to wonder how he does that. Is there a painting of him in some attic somewhere aging instead?)
In a way, this new career move is the right one for Reed. Writers of fiction get to create their own worlds and make up whatever story they like. It makes sense, because we all know telling the truth was never Reed’s strong suit.
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