Summary: As executive director of the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, Ralph Reed was a staunch opponent of legalized gambling. That didn't stop him from taking money from Indian gaming interests to pay him at Century Strategies, the political consulting firm he founded after leaving the Coalition. “[Gambling is a] totally immoral and unreliable source of income for our governments.” –Ralph Reed, November 1996
As executive director of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed established himself as a staunch opponent of legalized gambling. At a press conference in 1996 announcing the formation of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, Reed said, “We believe gambling is a cancer on the American body politic,” he said. “It is stealing food from the mouths of children . . . (and) turning wives into widows.” Reed went on to support federal legislation creating the Gambling Impact Study Commission Act of 1996. When President Bill Clinton appointed William A. Bible, the chairman of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, seen as someone sympathetic to the gambling industry, to that commission, Reed lashed out: “As the unfolding campaign finance scandal highlights, President Clinton has now sold his appointment to the highest bidder and has made this body the best commission money can buy.”
Flash forward to 2004. News media report that Ralph Reed acknowledged accepting money from Indian tribes with gaming operations for his work at Century Strategies,the political consulting firm he founded after leaving the Christian Coalition in 1997. The story that unfolded was truly fantastic, linking Reed to his old friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, under investigation by two Senate committees and the Justice Department, along with Michael Scanlon, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-TX) former press secretary, for bilking six Indian tribes out of more than $80 million between 2001 and 2004. (Reed met Abramoff in the early 1980s when both were active in the College Republicans; Grover Norquist is another friend from those days. )
• Reed contacted Abramoff in 1999 saying he wanted to do business. At the time, Abramoff was representing the Mississippi Choctaws, who opposed initiatives—a statewide lottery referendum and a video poker initiative--for legalized gambling in nearby Alabama because of the competition it would provide.
• Abramoff arranged for the Choctaws to give Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) $1.15 million in installments. Norquist agreed he would pass money on to the Alabama Christian Coalition and another antigamblinggroup that Reed was recruiting to fight the lottery. Reed knew the money came from the Choctaws. Indeed, he was sharing with Abramoff and the Choctaws his strategy and budget documents.
• Casinos and related entertainment businesses provide 85 to 90 percent of the Choctaw tribe’s revenues.
• Reed’s firm, Century Strategies, provided most of the services for the Alabama anti-gambling campaigns. When the Alabama Christian Coalition received checks from ATR, which totaled $850,000, the group signed them over to Reed immediately.
• Citizens Against Legalized Lottery, the other group Reed recruited to fight the anti-gambling campaigns, also turned money from ATR over to Reed. ATR sent a $300,000 check six days before the October 12, 1999 referendum on a statewide lottery. Five days later, Citizens Against Legalized Lottery wrote three checks to Reed totaling $270,960.
• From 2001 to 2002, Ralph Reed received $4.2 million to lobby against gambling proposals and enterprises in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Of the money Reed received, more than half, $2.4 million, came from a now defunct think tank run by Abramoff associate Michael Scanlon, a former aide to House Speaker Tom DeLay (R-TX.).
• Reed also got $1.8 million from another Scanlon group called Capitol Campaign Strategies. The National Journal reports that the American International Center had received almost $1 million from the Louisiana Coushattas and $1.1 million from the Mississippi Choctaws, rival tribes who wanted Texas casinos shut down.
• Reed, who contends he did not know any of the money he was paid came from gambling interests, was successful in generating support for a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general that led to the closing in February 2002 of casinos owned by the Tigua Indians of Texas and by the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas. Right after that, Abramoff, who had not revealed his role in closing the casino, offered his services to the Tiguas to help them reopen the casino.
• In August 2002, Reed traveled to St. Andrews, Scotland, to play golf, along with Abramoff, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), and others. Footing the bill for the trip was another group connected to Abramoff-—The Capital Athletic Foundation—which received generous funding from several Indian tribes with gambling operations.
• In September 2003, Abramoff hosted a fundraiser for Rep. David Vitter (R-LA). Two months later, Vitter inserted a provision in the 2004 Interior spending bill that would have made it impossible for the Jena tribe to build a casino outside tribal lands, which helped the Coushatta tribe, a client of Abramoff’s. Abramoff also got help from Ralph Reed, who through his group, the Committee Against Gambling Expansion, sent out a mass political mailing praising Vitter for his anti-gambling stance, when the congressman was considering a run for the governor’s seat in 2003.