Christian Coalition Urges Protest Over Ad

The Christian Coalition is making thousands of calls this week urging supporters to telephone Virginia's Democratic candidate for governor, Donald S. Beyer Jr., to protest a campaign ad that criticizes the coalition's founder, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

In a tape-recorded message, the Christian Coalition's president, Donald Hodel, twice gives a toll-free number for Beyer's campaign.

"Tell him to stop the bigotry and withdraw the ad," says Hodel, who was U.S. secretary of interior and secretary of energy during the Reagan administration. "Thank you, and God bless you."

Analysts said the phone blitz is another in a series of actions that seem to challenge the coalition's claim of political nonpartisanship, which it must maintain to remain tax exempt.

A recent seminar for coalition political activists in Fairfax County encouraged the activists to work against Beyer, the state's lieutenant governor, and support the Republican candidate for governor, former state attorney general James S. Gilmore III. The Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission are investigating the coalition's ties to the GOP.

"These phone calls are blatantly partisan," said William H. Wood, executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.

The coalition's calls raise the stakes in Beyer's effort to make the campaign a referendum on Robertson, who has given a total of $100,000 to Gilmore in his two statewide campaigns.

Gilmore did not emerge from the GOP's Christian wing, which always has regarded him with some suspicion. But Beyer's ad warns that Robertson will hold Gilmore's "feet to the fire."

Ralph Reed, a former executive director of the Christian Coalition, called Gilmore a mainstream conservative and said the ad's suggestion of extremism will backfire.

"Don Beyer has achieved in a single stroke what the Republicans have not been able to achieve: He has angered and mobilized the religious conservative constituency, which will now turn out in record numbers," said Reed, now a political consultant in Atlanta.

During a debate with Gilmore Monday, Beyer said that "there is no question that Mr. Robertson has a very political agenda, and he expects something for his $100,000," citing Robertson's antiabortion platform and support for using vouchers to direct public money to private schools.

Scott Keeter, polling director at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Beyer's attack could work with moderates but noted that one-third of Virginia voters call themselves born-again or evangelical Christians.

"You're talking about a significant bloc of voters that could be offended if they felt that the Beyer campaign was slamming religiously committed people, not just Robertson supporters," Keeter said.

Beyer, who is Episcopalian, said voters can tell the difference. "I'm a person of faith, but that doesn't mean I have to support Pat Robertson's political agenda," he said. "This is about politics, not religion."

Other analysts, meanwhile, contended that the coalition's calls play into Beyer's hand by taking the campaign dialogue off Gilmore's signature proposal, a plan to nearly phase out the personal property tax on cars and trucks.

In the television ad protested by the Christian Coalition, pictures of Robertson and Gilmore are shown over haunted-house music. "The Gilmore-Robertson plan threatens public education," the narrator says. "Don't let it happen."

The Christian Coalition's phone campaign -- being done by machines that can automatically dial hundreds of numbers an hour -- began Tuesday night, and officials said it would continue for several more days. By yesterday, Beyer's campaign had received about 100 calls criticizing the ad, although Beyer staff members said some callers apparently had not actually seen it.

Randy Tate, the Christian Coalition's executive director, said from the group's headquarters in Chesapeake, Va., that similar allegations of religious extremism didn't work against Gilmore in 1993, when he was elected state attorney general.

"This race should be decided on issues, not beating up Christians and using Christians as a punching bag," he said. "John F. Kennedy was attacked for the sheer fact that he was Catholic. Mr. Beyer is using the same sort of tactic."

Tate rejected suggestions that the phone campaign had a partisan motivation.

"If a Republican candidate engaged in religious bigotry, we'd be the first to step up and condemn those actions as well," he said. "We stand for a set of principles, not a political party."

Meanwhile, the liberal group People for the American Way held a news conference in Richmond yesterday and accused the Christian Coalition of targeting Gilmore and fellow Virginia Republicans for heavy support.

The group released a report detailing contributions Robertson and his allies have made to Gilmore and the Republican Party of Virginia, which has paid for pro-Gilmore mailings. The report then listed several positions Gilmore took as attorney general that the group said were favors to Robertson.

Gilmore's spokesman, Mark A. Miner, replied, "This is just Don Beyer using another liberal group to spread distortion and scare tactics to the people of Virginia."

Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

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