ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608050091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: ANALYSIS
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITER
note: above
THE CHRISTIAN COALITION faces a legal challenge that could endanger its tax-exempt status. Here's a closer look.
The Christian Coalition's executive director occasionally boasts about the urgent call he received in the closing days of the 1990 congressional campaign from his boss, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Robertson was worried that conservative Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina was on the verge of losing to Democrat Harvey Gantt. "So Pat called me up and said, `We have got to kick into action,''' Ralph Reed recalled at the coalition's national convention a year later.
"Bottom line is, five days later, we put three-quarters of a million voter guides in churches across the state of North Carolina, and Jesse Helms was re-elected by 100,000 votes out of 2.2 million cast."
In addition to the voter guides, the coalition made about 29,800 calls urging conservative and evangelical voters who were likely to support Helms to vote, according to a subsequent investigation by the Federal Election Commission. All told, the tax-exempt Christian Coalition spent $52,000 on the campaign.
The Helms race is just one of many elections cited by the FEC last week in a suit accusing the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition of making illegal campaign contributions to Republican candidates. At issue is whether the coalition's activities constitute a political endorsement.
The FEC - joined by a number of Democratic organizations that have never enjoyed the largesse of the coalition - says the answer is an obvious "yes."
"Although the Christian Coalition asserts that its major purpose as an organization is simply to discuss issues and influence legislation ... the record shows that the Christian Coalition seeks to achieve legislative success and political power through the election of like-minded candidates to federal office," wrote three FEC commissioners last week.
Attorneys for the coalition acknowledge the group's actions may influence legions of evangelical voters, but they argue that the activities fail to meet the strict legal definition of a political endorsement. And any finding to the contrary, they warn, would have a chilling effect on the coalition and hundreds of other smaller voter-education groups across the nation.
"How can citizens participate in democracy and discuss issues if they're concerned that the federal government will fine them for discussing issues?" asked Jim Bopp, an Indiana attorney defending the coalition in the suit.
Education or advocacy?
So starts a complex legal battle that many election law experts predict eventually will be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. The 1.7 million-member coalition, which vows to fight the FEC, faces potential fines of more than $1 million and - perhaps more important - government regulation and public disclosure of its long-secretive political spending and fund-raising.
A determination that the coalition is endorsing candidates could undermine the group's contention that it is tax-exempt. The Internal Revenue Service is reviewing whether a "substantial" portion of the coalition's $21million in annual contributions is spent on political endorsements, and thus subject to federal taxes.
Bopp said the coalition has scrupulously avoided endorsing candidates as last defined by the Supreme Court in 1976. An endorsement, the court said, must "include explicit words of advocacy of election or defeat of a candidate Congress, vote against, defeat, reject."
The coalition never uses such words in its voter guides, phone banking or direct mail activities, Bopp said. The guides - which are the center of the suit's focus - merely list candidates' stands on issues of importance to the coalition.
"We practice issue advocacy, not candidate advocacy," Bopp said. "That's a crucial distinction."
Critics of the coalition - including the Democratic National Committee, whose complaints led to the FEC's suit - say the group is flouting the spirit of the law. They say guides - tailored for each congressional district - report stands, sometimes inaccurately, on divisive social issues. And because the guides are distributed at churches with socially conservative members, they in essence constitute an endorsement, many say.
"It's a very coy way of getting around the law," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who examined the coalition's practices in a recent book on campaign finance, "Dirty Little Secrets."
The FEC long has been sympathetic to such complaints. For 20 years, it has sought to expand the definition of an endorsement to include examination of "the total context" of a political activity, such as publishing a voter guide. Those efforts, however, have been consistently overturned in lower courts.
"In matters pitting free speech issues against campaign finance laws, free speech has consistently won," said Lisa Rosenberg, a lawyer with the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, which monitors the FEC and supports broader disclosure laws.
"That means the FEC is in for an uphill battle, even though it may have a solid case."
The key to the FEC case, experts say, will be proving its charges that the coalition has coordinated its election year activities with GOP campaigns and the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington.
The FEC alleges that the coalition, in coordination with campaigns, spent $980,000 helping former President Bush's re-election bid in 1992, $52,000 aiding Helms in 1990, $61,000 in behalf of Senate candidate Oliver North of Virginia in 1994 and $325,000 helping the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1990.
The FEC says such expenses are "in-kind" contributions to campaigns that make the coalition subject to federal campaign finance and disclosure laws.
The coalition, which argues it is not subject to FEC regulations, denies coordinating spending with any campaign. The FEC has yet to reveal its proof. "We're waiting to see it," said coalition spokesman Mike Russell.
In their own words . . .
A determination that it has made in-kind contributions could hamper the coalition's fund-raising prowess. The group would no longer be allowed to accept corporate donations. And individuals, who now can give unlimited amounts to the coalition, would be limited to $1,000 per federal election.
Equally important, the coalition would be required to disclose the names of all people who contribute more than $200 a year and to detail all expenses.
"My sense is that some of the donors who do not want to be publicly identified with Reed and Robertson would be embarrassed," said John Green, a University of Akron political scientist who specializes in the religious right.
Three FEC commissioners, all Democratic appointees, wrote in an opinion last week that the coalition is no different from any political action committee seeking to influence elections and required to report its activities.
"Just as it would be unthinkable to exempt national [political] party committees from public disclosure ... so too the Christian Coalition should not be exempted from its disclosure responsibilities," they wrote. "Public disclosure is far too important to be so easily evaded."
Ironically, the FEC's suit offers quotes from Robertson and Reed speeches over the years as evidence that the coalition's goal is to elect conservative candidates.
"I believe that the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political force in America by the end of this decade," Robertson said in a 1991 training film for evangelical activists.
"We will develop the abilities to elect majorities in the U.S. Congress and the legislatures of at least 30 states, as well as city councils, the city school boards and other local bodies. ... We will know where our supporters live, how they vote, and we will be able to get them to the polls on election day."
Bopp said the quotes are legally meaningless as long as the coalition does not use "express words" of endorsement. "Whatever motives Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed choose to express are totally irrelevant."
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB