It sounds as if even You-Know-Who couldn’t help former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed get elected in Georgia — and a guy name Jack Abramoff certainly didn’t help:
Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed conceded defeat about 9:50 p.m. in Georgia’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor.
“Tonight my candidacy for lieutenant governor comes to an end,� he said.
He promised to work for the GOP ticket, including Sen. Casey Cagle (R-Gainesville), his rival in the lieutenant governor’s race.
Reed conceded at 9:48 p.m., speaking to a crowd that cheered for the first time all night.
With him was his wife, Jo Anne, and their four children.
“Today, Jo Anne and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. It was an important reminder of what’s really important.
“Stay in the fight, don’t retreat, and our values will win in November,� he said.
So why did he lose? One reason was a man named A-b-r-a-m-o-f-f.
In retrospect, with the Abramoff connection hanging around his neck, Reed didn’t have a prayer. The AP:
Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, unable to overcome his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, conceded defeat Tuesday in Georgia’s Republican race for lieutenant governor.
It was a stunning turnaround for Reed, who was making his first bid for elective office after working for years as a behind-the-scenes campaign strategist and leading the Christian Coalition and the state Republican Party. He vied with state Sen. Casey Cagle for the GOP nomination in a primary race that appeared closer than expected in recent months because of Reed’s work with Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud and corruption earlier this year.
In attack ads and televised debates, Cagle hammered away at Reed’s connections to Abramoff, and asked whether Reed could face criminal charges for accepting more than $5.3 million from two Indian tribes.
The significance of this loss can’t be understated: (1) There was a time when Reed and the group he represented was considered the can’t-lose wave of the GOP political future, (2) Reed was considered sort of the Karl Rove of the Christian Coalition — a guy who had the credentials, the job title and the political smarts to rise…and rise FAST, (3) This shows that there CAN be some political fallout from the corruption scandals of the past few years, (4) This shows that GOPers can’t simply assume voters will simply dismiss or ignore allegations of corruption and people who seem to be ethically challenged.
Read one of our previous posts on Reed and his Abramoff problems here.
An NBC News report last week put Reed’s impending political flop into perspective:
That race may have just gotten more complicated. On Wednesday, a Texas Indian tribe filed a civil suit alleging that Reed, Abramoff and several of their business associates engaged in fraud and racketeering in an effort to shut down the tribe’s casino.
Late last month, an InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion poll showed Reed slightly leading Cagle, 32-27 percent (with a whopping 41 percent undecided). But another InsiderAdvantage poll, released Monday after Cagle began hammering Reed’s links to Abramoff in a television ad (but before the Texas lawsuit was filed), has the candidates deadlocked at 37 percent each. Another poll by Strategic Vision, a GOP firm, has Cagle leading Reed, 42-41 percent.
….Reed, 45, has been a prominent figure within both the Republican Party and religious circles for nearly 20 years. In 1989, he became executive director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, and made the cover of Time magazine (which labeled him “The Right Hand of God”). In 2002, Reed served as chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, helping the GOP win the state’s contests that year for governor and U.S. Senate. And two years ago, he was the Bush-Cheney campaign’s chairman for the southeast region.
Mark Murray’s piece then details how Reed, aside from being close to The Guy Upstairs, was close to Abramoff:
Reed and Abramoff first met in 1981, when they worked together at the College Republican national committee; Reed even introduced Abramoff to his eventual wife. After Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997, he opened his own lobbying firm and asked Abramoff for help. “I need to start humping in corporate accounts!” Reed said to Abramoff in a 1998 email. “I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.”
Reed eventually became a key figure in Abramoff’s lobbying operation, which centered on casinos run by Indian tribes. Among other things, Reed — a lifelong gambling opponent — used his contacts with religious conservatives to drum up opposition to casinos that would have competed against Abramoff’s clients. In all, according to a recent report by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Reed earned more than $5.3 million from the operation.
And Cagle’s TV ad in Georgia’s race for lieutenant governor highlights Reed’s ties to Abramoff. “What’s behind Ralph Reed’s false attacks?” states the ad, which shows Reed’s face on playing cards. “A record of betrayal he’s desperate to hide. Reed said gambling is ‘immoral’ but took millions of dollars from convicted felon Jack Abramoff to help casinos.”
More recently, Cagle has suggested that Reed could faces charges before the November general election regarding his relationship with Abramoff, an accusation Reed strongly denies.
Merle Black, a professor of politics and government at Emory University, explains that what’s damaging to Reed isn’t necessarily Abramoff; rather, it’s the gambling charge, which hurts him with his conservative supporters. “Abramoff is more of a national story,” he notes. “He is in trouble because of the gambling issue.”
Whatever, Reed is out as an actual political “brand name” — for now.
Reuters has this quote from Black:
Merle Black, politics professor at Atlanta’s Emory University, told Reuters defeat would effectively “end his (Reed’s) career as an office seeker.”
Indeed: Reed is young enough to run again in the future. But he’ll (for now) have to go back to working behind the scenes. Even so, in terms of the outcome of his race and his close ties to Abramoff, he is now clearly political “damaged goods.”
So even if he resumes working behind the scenes, Ralph Reed starts Wednesday July 19, 2006 with his political stock in and outside of Georgia greatly diminished.
UPDATE: Reader Giftdrift from Georgia has a comment on this race that he has left in our comments section but it’s worth adding here as an update:
Actually, as a Georgia resident, I have a bit of a different take.
This was a bit of stand against a certain type of politics.
The Abramoff thing just didn’t play that well down here. Despite what some people may think, we are not all crazy down here.
Even though we had some of the most hotly contested Democrat races in generations, one of my most liberal friends down here crossed over to cast a vote for Cagle.
The fact is that although Reed is a native Georgian, he simply hasn’t been down here in years. I believe the Georgia Republican party was a little offended at Ralph seemingly descending from the mountain like Moses to simply take over things. We just don’t like that.
I also believe there were many people on both sides who didn’t want to face the potential firestorm of a Reed candidacy. Republicans didn’t want a controversial outsider. And Democrats, particularly like my friend, just didn’t want to see “satan” nominated. Neither side saw it as good for the state and I think that is pretty noble.
I guess I think that although Abramoff mattered on a meta-level, most people down here really just wanted to be Marlene Dietrich.
They just want to be left alone to decide their own fate.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.