Leaner and meaner? Trouble-plagued Christian Coalition cuts staff and programs, vows new direction toward grassroots-based militancy.

Trouble-Plagued Christian Coalition Cuts Staff And Programs, Vows New Direction Toward Grassroots-Based Militancy

Look for a leaner, meaner Christian Coalition coming soon to a precinct near you.

Under legal fire from the Internal Revenue Service and plagued by a stagnant membership and declining donations, TV preacher Pat Robertson's political group is searching for ways to hold on to its position as the nation's most powerful Religious Right organization. In the works are a move toward more grassroots activism, a greater emphasis on abortion and emotional social issues and a possible change in tax status.

These potential alterations come at a time when the Coalition is facing serious problems. Last December, Coalition leaders approved a major reorganization, firing almost one fifth of its 110 staff members, shutting down its flagship publication, Christian American, and cutting loose its minority outreach project.

CC spokesman Arne Owens told The Washington Post, "Our intent is to get back to our core mission of grassroots activism and prepare for next year. You might say we've put ourselves on a diet."

Outside observers, however, said there is more to the story.

"What you're having is a corporate restructuring," one anonymous activist told The Post. "If you use the corporate model, downsizing sometimes makes you leaner and meaner, sometimes it leaves you smaller. It's yet to be determined which it will be."

Money woes were apparently a major factor. The Coalition raised over $26 million in 1996, an election year. But in 1997, sources said the take will probably total closer to $17 million.

The Coalition thinks part of the shortfall can be credited to unauthorized use of the group's donor list for other causes by Hart Conover, Inc., the Northern Virginia fund-raising firm that ran the Coalition's direct mail operation for four years. According to The Virginian-Pilot, the Coalition sued the firm in federal district court last December, charging that its list was improperly acquired and used for fund-raising for other groups founded by Benjamin Hart, head of Hart Conover and a close friend of former Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed.

Regardless of the cause of the Coalition's financial crunch, it has had a harsh affect on some of the group's employees. The Virginian-Pilot reported that the 20 fired Coalition employees were pretty much thrown out in the cold. The magazine's staffers, for example, got no severance package even though the dismissals came just before Christmas.

But the biggest casualty was the Samaritan Project, the minority outreach program touted loudly by Reed. Reed used the Project as proof that he and other Coalition leaders were serious about reaching out to African-Americans and repairing the decades of distrust between the black community and white fundamentalists, many of whom supported segregation in the South.

The Project apparently failed miserably. Project Director Earl Jackson said ties to the Coalition hurt recruitment.

"It's difficult to be heard as speaking with authenticity when you are speaking for an organization that is poorly perceived by many in the black community," Jackson, a Baptist minister, told The Post. "I was very, very proud of my affiliation with the Christian Coalition, but the fact of the matter is it has been painted as callous toward the concerns and needs of blacks and other minority people."

Jackson, who will try to run the Project as an independent entity, hinted that Coalition leaders gave the program little financial support. "The Christian Coalition felt the necessity of being covetous of its fundraising apparatus," he told The Post.

Meanwhile, the Coalition is trying to rebuild its own base among militant fundamentalists, evangelicals and charismatics. That corps has apparently eroded due to Reed's strategy of making the Coalition appear mainstream and a Republican team player.

To make matters worse, the Coalition faces tough competition for the allegiance of Religious Right activists from other groups. Gary Bauer and the Family Research Council, for example, operate on an aggressive take-no-prisoners approach that appeals to hard-line religious conservatives. (Bauer serves as radio preacher James Dobson's political point man in Washington, D.C.)

In response, Robertson has signaled a renewed Coalition militancy. Last September he told Coalition lieutenants at a closed-door strategy session in Atlanta that it's time to start setting the agenda for Republicans in Congress. "Our time has come," he said. "This is what we want and we're going to demand it .... [I]t's time for us to start leading the team."

In a Jan. 7 interview in The Washington Times, Coalition President Don Hodel conceded that perceived ties to the Republican Party and Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign hurt the group with activists who saw Dole as too moderate.

"If Bob Dole had won, we'd have a bigger problem on our hands than we have," said Hodel. "Judging from the positions he has taken on issues, our problems would have been compounded. You would have `conservative' control of the White House and Congress, and people would be saying, `If this is what conservative governing means, we want no part of it.'"

Hodel admitted that some Coalition firebrands have quit the group entirely, joining the new National Federation of Republican Assemblies, a more militantly conservative outfit.

"There is a big lesson for us in the Republican assemblies, no question about it," observed Hodel. "They are building an organization with people, some of whom left the Christian Coalition for whatever reason."

The Coalition claims 1.9 million "members and supporters." But official filings with the post office indicate an active donor base of about 400,000. Hodel suggested to The Times that 7,000 to 8,000 activists do most of the organization's work. "We have to be careful that we don't become so mainstream that our constituency leaves us," he observed.

Hodel and Coalition Executive Director Randy Tate are telling reporters to expect a more militant approach on abortion, homosexuality and other social issues instead of the tax-cutting, budget-balancing priorities that Reed sometimes put forward.

Although Hodel told The Times the group does not hate homosexuals, he vowed to "fight to the bitter end ... efforts to make that lifestyle normal, to make the agenda we perceive to be there part of the training of our children." He blasted President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore for speaking out on behalf of gay rights. "By glamourizing homosexuality, are they saying they think kids should do more of it?" Hodel asked.

Tate took a similar hard line in an interview with Human Events, the conservative weekly. Calling abortion the Coalition's premier issue, Tate said, "We're going to make a massive push at the grassroots, especially in those states where we think we can have an impact" on members of Congress considering an override of Clinton's veto of the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban.

Tate told the paper the Coalition favors a ban on all abortions except to save the life of the woman. But he wouldn't say whether the group's 1998 voter guides would identify which Republican candidates favor exemptions for rape, incest or other difficult circumstances. The guides glossed over those distinctions in 1996 as a way to make Dole more palatable to the Coalition's constituency.

Reflecting its renewed focus on abortion, Coalition bosses in January endorsed a controversial proposal to forbid Republican Party support for GOP candidates who oppose the "partial birth" abortion ban. The issue bitterly divided Republican leaders who feared such a litmus test would turn off moderate voters and jeopardize the party's chances in the 1998 congressional elections.

"It's a matter of principle over politics," wrote the CC's Tate in a letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "We believe that supporters of the right to life need to be reassured that hard-earned dollars they contribute are not used to support the candidates who hold positions on abortion which they abhor."

According to the Associated Press, Coalition leaders debated for several days before deciding to send the letter. They finally did so because they thought their membership would demand the move. (No one apparently raised the question of why a supposedly "nonpartisan" group would intervene in internal Republican debates.)

Despite the new talk about returning to its core principles, partisan electioneering is likely to remain the group's main focus, especially in the 1998 balloting.

The Associated Press reported Jan. 6 that Coalition leaders are considering changes to the group's tax status to allow for more open and direct politicking. Possibilities include starting a political action committee (PAC) or adopting a Section 527(c) status with the IRS, a category similar to campaign committees.

The information was given to the news service by "a Coalition official, speaking on condition of anonymity." Some observers believe the revelation is a spin control effort. The Coalition is under pressure from the IRS, which has so far declined to make permanent the Coalition's provisional 501 (c)(4) tax-exempt status. The review has been ongoing since the group's founding in 1989.

By leaking the possibility of tax status changes to the press, Coalition leaders may be trying to make the plans seem voluntary. In fact, the step is more likely a desperate effort to escape from the clutches of the IRS, which has a growing mound of evidence that the group has flouted its tax status.

In a Jan. 9 press statement, Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn observed, "The evidence of the Christian Coalition's partisan politicking is now so overwhelming that even Pat Robertson knows he can't keep up the charade of non-partisanship any longer. It's long past time for Robertson to confess to his political sin of abusing his tax-exempt status."

Robertson's September speech to Coalition state leaders was made public by Americans United and sent to the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, another federal agency at odds with the Coalition. In that address, Robertson urged his group to emulate Tammany Hall and other notorious political machines of American history, hardly the role models one would expect for an organization that claims to be Christian and nonpartisan.

Robertson also took credit for electing the Republican majority in Congress in 1994, urged Coalition activists to skirt the law and unite behind a single Republican nominee in the 2000 GOP presidential primary and derided Democratic chances to win the race for the White House. (See "Boss Pat," October 1997 Church & State.)

Concluded AU's Lynn, "The Christian Coalition remains a formidable force in American politics, but I believe we have made great strides in revealing its true character to the American people and our law enforcement agencies. The results are finally beginning to show."