Christian Coalition Promises Voter Guides, Despite FEC Suit

The Federal Election Commission may be breathing down his neck, but Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed is undaunted.

At a lecture at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace on Friday, Reed said the group will distribute 45 million voter guides nationwide, the biggest drive in its history, and hopes to register at least 1 million new voters “who will help decide the outcome of the election” before November.

Reed said the group will continue the practice despite an FEC lawsuit filed in July accusing the coalition of making illegal corporate contributions to Republican candidates through the distribution of millions of voter guides and the organization of get-out-the-vote drives in the 1990, 1992 and 1994 campaigns.

Reed said the voter guides being distributed through churches in late October will, for the first time, include information about city council, school board and city clerk races in Orange County.

“Part of our agenda, that which has to do with crime and education, will be carried out on a local level,” Reed said.

On the national level, he said, a strong turnout of Christian conservatives in November could help reelect a Republican Congress for the first time since 1928 and make a close race between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

“Who will define politics in our time? It’s not the Perot vote or the feminist vote or the minority vote or the union vote. It’s the Christian vote,” Reed said.

Reed, 35, also decried what he called a media caricature of coalition members as poor, uneducated and easy to command.

The average Christian voters are college-educated with an average income of more than $40,000, he said.

Orange County, he said, “is one of the conservative bedrocks of America. We feel especially at home in Orange County because of our strong support here.”