The Nation.



Ralph Reed's Gamble

By Jack Newfield

This article appeared in the July 12, 2004 edition of The Nation.

June 24, 2004

When Ralph Reed was the boyish director of the Christian Coalition, he made opposition to gambling a major plank in his "family values" agenda, calling gambling "a cancer on the American body politic" that was "stealing food from the mouths of children." But now, a broad federal investigation into lobbying abuses connected to gambling on Indian reservations has unearthed evidence that Reed has been surreptitiously working for an Indian tribe with a large casino it sought to protect--and that Reed was paid with funds laundered through two firms to try to keep his lucrative involvement secret. Reed has always operated behind the scenes, and apparently he didn't want to risk becoming a humbled hypocrite like his right-wing cohorts William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh.

News accounts of the emerging scandal have focused on the two main figures under investigation: lawyer/lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, House GOP majority leader Tom DeLay's former spokesman and head of two campaign and public relations companies. But Reed has managed to slither below the media's radar--until now.

Neither he, Abramoff or Scanlon returned phone calls.

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About Jack Newfield

Jack Newfield is a veteran New York political reporter and a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He is the author of, among others, The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania (Nation Books) and, most recently, American Rebels more...

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