Robertson delivers pep talk to coalition

Christian Century, Oct 8, 1997

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, told a September 13 private meeting of some 100 coalition activists that he wants "a winner" in the next presidential election. Robertson's remarks were tape-recorded in Atlanta by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group that has frequently been critical of the Christian Coalition. Americans United says the coalition is a partisan political organization that does not deserve tax-exempt status.

At the beginning of his speech, Robertson clearly indicated that his remarks were not for public consumption. "This is sort of speaking in the family," he said. "If there's any press here, would you please shoot yourself? Leave. Do something." Robertson then went on to speak favorably of Tammany Hall, the former political machine in New York, and the political machines in other big cities as models for the coalition's activities.

Robertson urged his listeners to understand that the coalition's strength lies in its involvement on the local level. "We've got a playbook at the Christian Coalition. It is very simple. We're the only ones that are executing it and it's called precinct organization," he said. "There are 175,000 precincts in the country, and we wanted ten trained workers in each of them. That's about [enough] to . . . take the nation.... When you get it down to the school board races and the city council races and the legislative races . . . [a] few thousand votes make the difference.... So if you have a couple thousand people, you can do wonderful things."

In the speech, Robertson mocked Vice-President Al Gore as "Ozone Al" and described House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.) as unelectable. "So I don't think at this time and juncture the Democrats are going to be able to take the White House unless we throw it away," he said. "But we have to get a responsible person and we have to realize some strategy."

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said the tape shows that the Christian Coalition "is nothing but a hardball Republican political machine with a thin veneer of religiosity.... The IRS should move promptly to remove the Christian Coalition's provisional tax-exempt status." Time magazine quoted Lynn as saying concerning Robertson's comments, "With the IRS, we would suggest if they haven't seen a smoking gun yet, this is the smoking gun."

Arne Owens, the coalition's communications director, confirmed the accuracy of the reports of the remarks but said Robertson was speaking as a private citizen. The Christian Coalition, he said, "will not endorse a candidate. We do not tell people how to vote." Robertson, in his remarks, suggested that he was aware of the laws constraining partisan electoral activity by tax-exempt organizations. "I know that all these laws say that we've got to be careful, but there's nothing that says we can't have a few informal discussions among ourselves," he said, prompting chuckles from the audience.

This is not the first time Robertson has been accused of using apparently religious operations for quite different pursuits. This spring the Virginia-Pilot, a Norfolk, Virginia, newspaper, reported that in 1994 the televangelist had used Zaire-bound airplanes registered to his tax-exempt humanitarian organization for business purposes involving his personal diamond mining enterprise--the African Development Company, based in Kinshasha. Two of three planes flown to then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) were registered to Robertson's Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation. But chief pilot Robert Hinkle of Chandler, Arizona, said only one or two of the approximately 40 flights made during his six months in the country could be termed humanitarian; the rest of the flights were related to mining.