THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 1, 1996 TAG: 9608010444
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 97 lines
The Christian Coalition, charged by the government with illegally helping Republican candidates, narrowly avoided being sued on a second issue - failure to register and disclose its federal campaign spending, according to documents released Wednesday.
``The real story is what got swept under the commission's carpet,'' wrote the three Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission in an opinion released after the lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
The lawsuit accuses the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, of making illegal corporate contributions to Republican candidates through its voter guides, get-out-the-vote efforts and other activities.
But the FEC declined to pursue a second allegation: that the coalition's actions make it a political committee subject to federal registration and disclosure requirements.
The second issue is in some ways more significant, because a finding that the coalition is substantially a partisan political machine would undermine its tax-exempt status and potentially subject the organization to payment of nearly seven years of back taxes. The Internal Revenue Service has never ruled on whether the group meets the test for tax-free status.
The documents released Wednesday show a deep and angry divide on the commission about how aggressively to pursue the Christian Coalition.
The three Democratic FEC members noted that the coalition had spent $1.4 million on help for GOP candidates like former President George Bush, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms and Virginia Senate candidate Oliver North.
Evidence gathered by FEC investigators ``shows that the Christian Coalition seeks to achieve legislative success and political power through the election of like-minded candidates to federal office,'' in part through building a precinct organization that resembles a political party, the commissioners wrote.
``Based on the overwhelming evidence before us, we conclude that the Christian Coalition's major purpose is the nomination or election of candidates to elective public office,'' wrote the three Democratic members, Scott E. Thomas, John Warren McGarry and Danny Lee McDonald.
But the panel's two Republican members, Joan D. Aikens and Lee Ann Elliott, declined to go along, saying politics is not the coalition's ``core purpose.''
As a result, the FEC voted unanimously to proceed under a less broad, although still significant, legal theory - that the coalition, which like most other organizations of its type is incorporated, made contributions barred by the prohibition on corporate donations to candidates.
The third GOP seat on the commission is vacant. The man who held that seat until last October, Trevor Potter, sympathized with the Democrats in an opinion written just before he left the commission.
``The evidence . . . demonstrates that (the coalition) is first and foremost an organization with a distinctly electoral purpose,'' Potter wrote. ``The crux of this enforcement action is that the Christian Coalition should play by the same rules as everyone else in the political battlefield.''
In an interview Wednesday, Potter declined to speculate whether he would have sided with the Democrats in May, when the most recent vote was taken.
Democrats on the panel offered a detailed, 14-page summary on Wednesday of the evidence marshaled by the FEC's lawyers.
The summary quotes Robertson as saying that the group's mission is ``to elect majorities in the U.S. Congress'' and to ``become the decisive voice in at least one of the two major political parties.''
According to the summary, Robertson told activists at a 1991 conference, ``You don't win elections if you don't have some money,'' and, discussing planned budget increases, he said, ``This money has to go for candidates, not for administration.''
At the conference, Robertson described plans to amass a database of 50 million voters, and executive director Ralph Reed discussed ``our opportunity this year to elect more people like Jesse Helms . . . to the United States Senate.''
Christian Coalition lawyer James Bopp said those comments were legally irrelevant because ``what the Christian Coalition actually did was nonpolitical, regardless of what the hoped-for effect of these expenditures would be by some people.''
In the documents, the FEC concluded that the coalition illegally spent more than $1.4 million to help elect federal candidates, including nearly $1 million to help Bush's 1992 re-election bid.
According to the FEC, the money included $980,000 to the Bush-Quayle 1992 presidential campaign, $325,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1990 and $52,000 to the 1990 campaign of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.
In addition, the NRSC, the committee dedicated to helping elect Republicans to the Senate, gave the Christian Coalition $64,000 in 1990 to help prepare voter guides, the FEC said.
NRSC spokesman Dan McLagan said Wednesday that there was ``absolutely no coordination'' between the Senate committee and the Christian Coalition. Of the contribution, he said, ``we just sent the money to them as we do to other organizations that engage in good government activities.''
Bopp said the FEC was wrong on the law. He said the coalition's activities weren't coordinated with the candidates and in any case did not count as political spending under the federal election law because they didn't advocate the election of any particular candidate. MEMO: The Associated Press and The Washington Post contributed to this
report.
KEYWORDS: CHRISTIAN COALITION REPUBLICAN PARTY
RELIGION POLITICS INVESTIGATION by CNB