A Dirty Campaigner

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:07:57 +0000

Bush-Cheney 2000, 2004

Ralph Reed served as chair of the Southeast Region for President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. In 2000, Reed was a consultant and senior advisor to Bush-Cheney 2000, and was widely credited with crafting Bush’s victory over Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the intensely negative South Carolina primary

Reed was “paid to develop the no-holds-barred -- and winning -- South Carolina primary campaign strategy for Bush against Sen. John McCain, which included phone banks branding McCain as untrustworthy on abortion and for being a little too cozy with gays."

In one of the phone calls, a caller described McCain as “a cheat, a liar, and a fraud.” Bush responded that such tactics would not be permitted on his campaign and vowed to fire whoever did it. Bush-Cheney campaign filings show that he paid Reed’s company, Century Strategies, at least $211,000 for telemarketing and direct mail in late 1999 and early 2000.

It has been widely speculated, but never confirmed, that Reed was also an architect and key player in a variety of whisper campaigns aimed at discrediting McCain on a personal level, including rumors that he fathered children out of wedlock and had a black child.

According to Martin Kondracke in The Washington Times, “Mr. McCain's allies blame the character-assassination on the Bush campaign - especially on former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.”

In the end, Christian conservatives voted for Bush 3-to-1, thanks to in large part to Reed’s dirty campaigning. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said McCain had been “politically victimized by 19 days of hate mail” and intimated that the attacks were carried out by operatives “at least loosely associated with religious right gurus Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson.”

Saxby Chambliss for Senate, 2002

Reed served as chair of the Georgia Republican Party during the 2002 election cycle. While there, he doubled its fundraising to $10.7 million and worked to viciously defeat the Democratic incumbent (and war hero) Senator Max Cleland.

In the post-9/11 political climate, national security became a core issue of the campaign. Chambliss and the Georgia Republican party “went straight for the jugular,” accusing Cleland, who lost both legs and his right arm while fighting in Vietnam, of being soft on defense.

One particularly shocking television advertisement flashed pictures of Osama bin Laden. While state Democrats called the ad “shameless,” Reed argued that the issue was Cleland’s “voting record, not his war record.”

The Georgia Republican Party went negative early, running the first attack ad of the season in mid-September. The ad accused Cleland of voting “116 times” to raise taxes, a charge the campaign immediately refuted. The ad referred to quotes attributed to Cleland by the Associated Press of his concern over making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent. Reed claimed that this meant "Cleland is actually favoring resurrecting the death tax, eliminating education tax credits for working families, reinstating the marriage penalty and raising income tax.”

Public Campaign Action Fund - A Dirty Campaigner - Comments

A Dirty Campaigner