For reasons that have never really been clear to me, the religious right has consistently opposed gambling in nearly all of its forms. And yet, a few of the movement’s biggest leaders have had some personal trouble with the issue over the years.
Best-selling compiler Bob Bennett is widely known for his expensive gambling habits. Less well known is that Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson purchased two race horses in 2002 despite his group’s crusade against legalized gambling.
And, as several sites have mentioned over the last couple of days, Robertson’s former right-hand man at the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, has been caught up in a major gaming industry scandal.
When Ralph Reed was the boyish director of the Christian Coalition, he made opposition to gambling a major plank in his “family values” agenda, calling gambling “a cancer on the American body politic” that was “stealing food from the mouths of children.” But now, a broad federal investigation into lobbying abuses connected to gambling on Indian reservations has unearthed evidence that Reed has been surreptitiously working for an Indian tribe with a large casino it sought to protect–and that Reed was paid with funds laundered through two firms to try to keep his lucrative involvement secret.
Oops.
The Nation really has the goods on Reed this time. The magazine was researching a federal investigation into GOP lawyer/lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay aide Mike Scanlon when they apparently discovered that Reed was heavily involved with both. Be sure to check out the article. It’s quite a sordid tale, particularly for a man once called the “right hand of God” by Time magazine.