Voter Guide Case Ruling a Win for Christian Group

A federal judge ruled Monday that the Christian Coalition did not illegally aid Republican candidates by distributing voter guides to churches, handing a victory to a group hoping to regain lost clout and donors after two difficult years.

“It allows us to go unfettered into 2000 for the largest, most comprehensive get-out-the-vote effort in the history of grass-roots politics,” said Randy Tate, the coalition’s chief lobbyist. He predicted the group will distribute 75 million voter guides in the next election.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Green threw out large portions of a 1996 government lawsuit charging that the socially conservative group’s voter guides, phone banks and other get-out-the-vote operations were partisan activities designed to aid Republican candidates and should be treated as contributions under federal law.

She ruled in favor of the Federal Election Commission on just two points--that the coalition in 1994 improperly assisted then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North, then the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia, and should pay a fine. The amount will be determined later.

The Christian Coalition had vigorously fought the lawsuit, defending the voter guides it has distributed for years to churches on the Sunday before election days.

The group argued the guides were covered by free speech and did not specifically advocate a candidate’s election or defeat, and thus should not be regulated as federal campaign contributions.