
By: David Rice
To: Austin Ziegler
Re: Ralph Reed & the Christian Reight

AZ> These people scare me, but the Federal Government has a
AZ> way to reduce their involvement now, if they have the
AZ> balls to do it.
AZ>
AZ> Just recently, a church had its tax-exempt status revoked
AZ> because it acted in a "partisan" manner (i.e., it took a
AZ> political position as a non-profit organization).
AZ>
AZ> IMHO, any church that directly supports any political
AZ> organization, such as is happening with the CC, should
AZ> lose its tax-exempt status.
AZ>
AZ> Of course, the wording would have to be made such that
AZ> churches aren't singled out, but any tax-exempt, non-profit
AZ> organization.
AZ>
AZ> Might work.


STEALTH? DECEPTION? YOU DECIDE

The Christian Coalition claims it doesn't back candidates. It
claims it doesn't run stealth campaigns. It claims its voter
guides are non-partisan. It claims to control massive voter
blocs. Is the Christian Coalition telling the truth? You
decide.

The following text is transcribed from a presentation by Max
C. Karrer, M.D., at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory
conference in Washington, DC, last September. Dr. Karrer is
the North Florida Coordinator for the Christian Coalition of
Florida and the chairman of the finance committee to the
board of trustees for Regent University. He also serves on
the executive board of the Republican Party of Duvall County,
Florida. Titled "Using Computers at the Grass Roots," the
presentation attracted a standing-room-only crowd.

"First you select your churches. There are some churches
where you would not necessarily find what I call Christians
in the church. You select your evangelical churches, your
renewed churches, your charismatic churches. You don't select
your liberal, mainline denominations. If you select your
churches right, you'll have a 90% match on voters who will be
with us. That's what we do.

"As an example of how this works, we had a legislative race
where we had a female Jewish lawyer -- liberal, feminist
endorsed by NOW -- who had knocked out three years ago a
pro-life Christian. We didn't know what we were doing -- they
poured NARAL money in  and managed to beat him by 200 votes.
And it was all because we didn't know what we were doing.

"By this time she was the darling of the Democrats in the
Florida legislature. They gave her all the choice committee
assignments; they had bigger and better plans for her, and so
on. And we had a fellow who was running for his first
political office -- named Jim Fuller -- who jumped into the
race.

"This time we had our Christian voter data base. We had our
church liaison committees. We had our voter guides going. And
we could quietly -- we were not allowed to give them away, so
we charged him five dollars -- but we printed labels for him
of the Christian voters, which enabled him to put out
directed mailings to the Christian voter, that he would not
necessarily do to the general public.

"To make a long story short, he beat her 65% to 35% -- it was
a landslide. And they didn't know what hit them, because  --
you want to talk about stealth campaigns -- it was quietly
done, and they didn't realize they were in trouble, until it
was too late.  This also convinced the state Republican Party
that they better deal with the Christian Coalition, at least
in Duvall County, because <em>every candidate we got behind
won</em> [emphasis added], in Duvall in the '92 elections.
This was the method we used.

"We don't GIVE our list to anybody. What we will do is print
labels for some people. That we WILL do -- I SOLD him the
labels, I didn't GIVE them to him. It's legal then, see. For
five dollars!

"The thing I want to say about building up a Christian data
voter base is: political candidates, or politicians, only
understand two things, and that's money and votes. And if
they think you control a lot of votes, you suddenly become
very powerful in their eyes.

"Politicians in our section think we have a bigger data voter
base than we do. But we don't change that perception, we
don't tell them. They come to us now. When someone wants to
run for office, they come to Christian Coalition; they want
to talk to us. It gives you -- and not just for elections --
it gives you tremendous lobbying power with the legislator,
because they think you have this huge bloc of voters that you
can swing -- though you can't necessarily."

Copyright 1995 IFAS
The Freedom Writer / ifas@crocker.com


