Fec Says Christian Coalition Broke Law Right-Wing Group Accused Of Violating Campaign Disclosure Laws And Exceeding Contribution Limits On Behalf Of Republican Candidates

The Federal Election Commission charged Tuesday that the Christian Coalition persistently has violated election laws to help Republicans and hurt Democrats.

In a civil suit filed in U.S. District Court, the bipartisan commission charged that the religiously oriented political corporation founded and chaired by Virginia televangelist Pat Robertson broke campaign disclosure laws and exceeded contribution limits in the 1990, 1992 and 1994 elections.

The suit charges that in breaking the law, the Christian Coalition acted “in coordination, cooperation and/or consultation” with the personal campaign committees of President George Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992; Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., in 1990; Republican Senate challenger Oliver North in Virginia in 1994; Reps. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., in 1992, and J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., in 1994; and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in seven U.S. Senate races in 1990.

The suit also charges that the coalition, without the cooperation of the candidates, independently violated federal law by supporting Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., in 1994 and opposing Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., in 1992, as well as issuing a voting scorecard intended to influence every election involving an incumbent senator or representative in 1994.

The FEC’s lawsuit comes at a time when the seven-year-old Christian Coalition, poised to distribute another 45 million voter guides during this year’s campaign, has built itself into one of the most formidable players in American politics.

But resolution of the lawsuit could affect not only the conservative religious group but also organizations across the political spectrum - anti-abortion groups, unions, environmentalists - that have increased their political activity but, like the Christian Coalition, argue that their focus on issues keeps their activities outside the jurisdiction of the FEC.

Political action committees must disclose where their money comes from and how much they spend to help or hurt each candidate, and must observe limits on how much they can spend on each race. The coalition argues that it is not a political action committee, but a nonprofit, non-political educational organization, which doesn’t need to file reports on such details.

“We are absolutely and totally confident that we will be fully vindicated,” said Ralph Reed, the coalition’s executive director.

Promising a vigorous defense, coalition spokesman Mike Russell dismissed the suit as “a completely baseless and legally threadbare attempt by a reckless federal agency to silence people of faith and deny them their First Amendment rights.”

At the Interfaith Alliance, which opposes the coalition, executive director Jill Hanauer said that “attacking the FEC by claiming that somehow this organization is anti-Christian (is) the kind of tactics religious political extremists use to silence their critics.”

Two Republican members of the FEC, chairwoman Lee Ann Elliott and commissioner Joan Aikens, joined with two Democrats, Scott Thomas and John McGarry, to support filing the suit. Another Democrat was absent and there is a GOP vacancy on the six-member panel.

“There was a majority of the commission that felt they had gone too far,” Elliott said in an interview, speaking of the coalition. “And we’ll have to let the courts decide that now.” She said the case “has some big issues in it” and predicted that it would reach the Supreme Court.

The coalition was founded in 1989 by supporters of Robertson’s failed 1988 bid for the GOP presidential nomination. Today it sends a newsletter to nearly 400,000 addresses, claims 1.7 million supporters, publishes and distributes millions of voting guides, and trains conservative Christians to take part in grass-roots politics. The application for tax-exempt status that it filed more than five years ago has never been approved or disapproved by the Internal Revenue Service.

The voter guides it distributes through direct mail and in homes and church parking lots are “systematically rigged” to help its chosen candidates, according to political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.

“It is conceivable that (precedents set in this lawsuit) could result in limitations being placed on groups like the Christian Coalition and even labor,” Sabato said. “We might end up with full disclosure of election expenditures by all groups on the left and the right.”

The commission’s suit challenges the claim by Christian Coalition leaders that their “educational” activity never descends into “direct advocacy” of the election or defeat of a candidate.

For example, the Georgia affiliate of the Christian Coalition distributed a letter and scorecard just before the state’s primaries in July 1994. The scorecard stated, “The only incumbent Congressman who has a Primary election is Congressman Newt Gingrich - a Christian Coalition Inc., 100 percenter.” And, said the commission, “The cover letter encouraged the reader to take the scorecard to the voting booth.”

That amounted to an attempt to get people to vote for Gingrich, and should have been reported as a political expenditure, the lawsuit maintains.