Once Powerful Christian Coalition Teeters on Insolvency

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Once Powerful Christian Coalition Teeters on Insolvency
By Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot

Saturday 08 October 2005

The Christian Coalition, the onetime powerhouse of the religious right founded by Pat Robertson, is struggling to stay afloat.

The group's annual revenue has shrunk to one- twentieth of what it was a decade ago - from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to $1.3 million in 2004 - and it has left a trail of unpaid bills from Texas to Virginia. Among the creditors who have sued the coalition for nonpayment are landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and at least one former employee seeking back pay.

It has even come to this: The company that moved the group out of its Washington headquarters in 2002 went to small-claims court Friday in Henrico County trying to collect $1,890 that remains unpaid on its three-year-old bill.

It is the latest in at least a dozen judicial collection actions brought against the coalition since 2001. The amounts sought by creditors total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The reasons for the group's decline are legion, say supporters, critics and experts who have followed its trajectory. Among them are the loss of key leaders, including Robertson, who resigned as president in 2001; alleged mismanagement by his successors; the cyclical nature of politics; and bitter infighting within the organization and with other political players on the religious right.

Christian Coalition Timeline

1988 - After Pat Robertson's failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he turns to Ralph Reed - a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right - for day-to-day operations of the coalition founded in 1989.

1997 - Ralph Reed leaves the coalition and later sets up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

2000 - The coalition, which had been based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, moves to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

2001 - Robertson resigns as president, turning over the reins to Roberta Combs, right, who, within a year, closes the Washington office and moves the group to South Carolina. Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including suppliers of services for its 2002 "Road to Victory" rally in Washington.

2004 - In a fiscal report to South Carolina, the coalition claims revenue of $1.3 million and expenses of $1.5 million, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

"Their future is really bleak," said Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has followed the Christian conservative movement for years. "The Christian Coalition is a shell of its former self."

In one sense, the group is a victim of its own success, Rozell said. It is widely credited with helping Republicans seize control of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000, but with those goals achieved, it has lost much of its reason for being.

"These types of opposition groups tend to do really well when the other party is in power - especially, for a religious right group, when the folks in power are Bill and Hillary Clinton," Rozell said. "But when Bush is in the White House and the Republicans control Congress, the need for a Christian Coalition as a counterweight to established power just isn't that great."

Coalition officials insist everything's fine. As if to underline the point, last month they announced the hiring of a new executive director, Jason T. Christy, the 34-year-old publisher of The Church Report, a national news and business journal for pastors and Christian leaders.

"The Christian Coalition is going to be around for a long time," said Roberta Combs, the group's president. "I really believe that with all my heart."

The coalition arose from the ashes of a failed 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination by Robertson, the Virginia Beach-based founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

To run the group's day-to-day affairs, Robertson brought in Ralph Reed - a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right.

The coalition mobilized millions of conservative Christians with its voter guides - pocket-sized candidate scorecards distributed in churches.

Reed left the coalition in 1997 and set up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. He has also become a central figure in the American Indian casino gambling scandal surrounding indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The coalition hit its zenith in 1996, when it pulled in a record $26 million in revenue. By contrast, in its 2004 annual report to the South Carolina secretary of state, the group reported $1.3 million in revenue and $1.5 million in expenses, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

Based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, the coalition moved to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2000. Its Chesapeake landlord sued the group in 2001 for $76,546 in back rent, in a case that is still open in Chesapeake Circuit Court.

Within months of the move to Washington, 10 black employees filed a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging that they were forced to enter the office by the back door and eat in a segregated area. The coalition settled the suit in December 2001 for about $300,000, according to several published reports.

That same month, Robertson announced his resignation as president, saying he wanted to spend more time on his broadcast ministry and Regent University, the Christian school he founded next door in Virginia Beach. He was succeeded as president by Combs, head of the coalition's South Carolina chapter, who closed the Capitol Hill headquarters in November 2002 and now runs the group from an office in Charleston, S.C.

On its Web site, the coalition still lists a Washington post office box as its mailing address, but it no longer has an office in the capital. It employs a lobbyist who works out of his home.

It was the move from Capitol Hill that left an unpaid bill resulting in the claim against the coalition Friday in Henrico County. The coalition is contesting the claim.

Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including the mailing companies Pitney-Bowes and Federal Express. The group has also been sued by suppliers of audio, lighting, exhibit construction and other services for its 2002 "Road to Victory" rally in Washington, which featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Robertson and now-indicted House leader Tom DeLay.

Even the coalition's longtime Virginia Beach law firm, Huff, Poole & Mahoney, has joined the chase. The firm secured a $63,958 judgment for back legal bills in 2003 that resulted in a garnishment of the group's bank account and a partial payment of $21,136. The firm has retained a South Carolina attorney to try to collect the rest.

One of the coalition's most costly legal battles was a 2002 blowup with Focus Direct Inc., a San Antonio direct-mail company that sued the group over a major fundraising campaign that went sour. The case dragged on for two years. Combs said it was settled for $200,000.

One of the coalition's co-defendants, Northern Virginia fundraiser William G. Sidebottom, declared bankruptcy as a result. His attorney, Kevin M. Young of San Antonio, said it was a messy case.

"My father was a preacher, and I became aware of an old saying: 'There's no politics like church politics,'" Young said. "This is an example of that. On the outside, everybody's making a happy face, but behind the curtain, it was pretty unseemly."

And then there's family politics.

Combs hired her daughter Michele as communications director and Michele's husband, Tracy Ammons, as a Capitol Hill lobbyist. When their marriage dissolved into a nasty divorce and child-custody battle, Ammons was fired.

He then sued the coalition for $130,000 in unpaid salary, accusing his mother-in-law of "personal animosity and malice" arising out of a desire to break up the marriage.

Explaining in an affidavit how he went months without a paycheck, Ammons said: "I believed that … I could trust my own mother-in-law."

In another affidavit filed in the Ammons case, Tammy Farmer, who worked at the coalition as a bookkeeper in 2001, said she found the group's financial affairs in disarray.

"I witnessed a very consistent and chronic pattern of Roberta Combs intentionally refusing to pay valid debts, salaries and accounts for no discernible reason," Farmer said.

As the overdue bills piled up, Farmer said, telephone service would be cut off occasionally and vendors would refuse to do further business with the coalition.

Farmer said Combs frequently told her, "Don't pay … they'll never sue."

Debt is nothing new for the coalition, Combs said Friday.

"In 1999, when I came into the national organization, it had debt," she said. "I had to do a lot of creative things. It has less debt now than it had then."

The Ammons case is in arbitration, but fallout from it continues. Arlington County Circuit Judge Joanne F. Alper imposed $83,141 in sanctions against Ammons and his attorney, Jonathon Moseley, for improper and frivolous pleadings. Both declared bankruptcy as a result.

The coalition's attorney, Brad D. Weiss, moved last month to withdraw from the Ammons case, citing an "irreconcilable conflict" among himself, the coalition leadership and its board.

Meanwhile, two other attorneys, H. Jason Gold and Alexander M. Laughlin, who had been representing the coalition in the Ammons bankruptcy proceedings, moved to withdraw as well. Their reason: The coalition had failed to pay them.

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News researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this story.