Ralph (Cherubic Sleazebag) Reed's Criminal Connections

[jefferson_dem]

Reed can't escape bad gamble

Jack Abramoff is not a tall man, but these days he casts a very long shadow that stretches from Washington, D.C., all the way to Georgia, where his longtime friend and ally, Ralph Reed, is preparing a run for lieutenant governor.

<SNIP>

In 2001 and 2002, Abramoff secretly hired Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, to gin up a morality-based "grassroots coalition" to pressure Texas officials to close an Indian casino in El Paso. The casino, run by the dirt-poor Tigua tribe, competed with casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi that were clients of Abramoff. He wanted the Tigua casino closed, and he paid Reed

$4 million to do the hit.

That was right up Reed's alley. Since leaving the Christian Coalition in 1997, Reed has gone into private consulting work, selling his ability to energize his religious network on behalf of private companies as well as politicians. In this case, Reed recruited James Dobson, the leader of the powerful evangelical group Focus on the Family, to put pressure on Texas officials. He used his standing among conservative Christians to generate anti-gambling letters and phone calls and to "get our pastors riled up" against the casino, as Reed put it in an e-mail to Abramoff.

<SNIP>

And unlike Reed, the pastors and congregations that he drew into his web had no idea that what they perceived to be a moral crusade against gambling was instead being directed and financed by gamblers, on behalf of gamblers, and to the financial enrichment of a man they trusted and saw as a hero.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/2005/032105.html

[starroute]

1. Reed's entanglement could be as important as Delay's

Abramoff and Reed go way back together. Reed was executive director of the College Republican National Committee in 1984-85, when Abramoff was national chairman.

But while everyone knows Delay is sleazy, Reed has this squaky-clean image. It would be jut lovely to see him some of the Abramoff mud sticking to him.