Summary: In 1997, Karl Rove recommended Ralph Reed to the Enron Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract worth a reported $300,000 in the years leading up to the company's collapse; at one point, Reed was earning a $30,000/month retainer. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate whether the consulting contract Enron gave Reed should be considered a campaign contribution.

In 1997, when then-Gov. George Bush was considering his bid for the presidency, advisor Karl Rove recommended Reed to Enron for a lucrative consulting contract. Rove did this as a way to keep Reed’s allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the campaign payroll, reported The New York Times in 2002. At the time, Bush was developing a message of “compassionate conservativism” and was worried about being too closely associated with Reed, who had just left his post as executive director of the Christian Coalition.

The energy company hired Reed through his firm, Century Strategies, to develop grassroots support for electricity deregulation. Enron paid Reed about $300,000 in the years leading up to the company’s collapse; at one point, Reed was earning a $30,000/month retainer.

In 2002, following the report in The New York Times about Rove recommending Reed, the right-leaning watchdog group Judicial Watch asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate whether the consulting contract Enron gave Reed should be considered a campaign contribution. In 2003, the FEC cleared the Bush campaign of the charges. The agency did note that while Reed did “substantial” work for the company during the first three months of his contract, after that he collected payments “for several months thereafter despite doing little or no additional work.”

Overall, Enron’s PAC, executives, and their families contributed $116,800 to the Bush 2000 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Then-CEO Ken Lay was a Bush Pioneer who pledged to raise at least $100,000 for the campaign.