Mark Robin­son is a demon­stra­bly tal­ent­ed politi­cian. Or at least that’s one way of inter­pret­ing his mete­oric rise. After all, he only won his first polit­i­cal office, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, in 2020. And here he is in 2024 as the GOP’s guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee. And, of course, he’s the dar­ling of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office. The “Some Folks Need Killing!” guy is great for recruit­ing pas­tors. Now you know.

But it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it could be argued Robin­son’s polit­i­cal career start­ed long before that. As TPM doc­u­ment­ed, Robin­son had been a pro­lif­ic pur­vey­or of far right con­tent on social media for over a decade and effec­tive­ly became a right-wing star after a pro-gun speech he gave at a city coun­cil meet­ing in 2018 went viral. And as we also saw, it was 2019 when Robin­son appeared for an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with Sean Moon, son of Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon who now runs his own church in Penn­syl­va­nia that treats AR-15 rifles as divine tools for God’s cho­sen peo­ple. The next year, he goes on to win his first polit­i­cal race. Weeks lat­er, the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion tran­spires, with Sean Moon there at the Capi­tol among the pro-Trump mob. And where do we find Don­ald Trump on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2021, the 20th Anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks? At a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church event. The CNP may be the dom­i­nant theo­crat­ic enti­ty in the US, but the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is no slouch. It still has clout.

And that brings us to the fol­low Covert Action Intel­li­gence Bul­letin from back in the Spring of 1987 about the fas­ci­nat­ing ties between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and the domin­ion­ist forces behind the CNP. Ties that were on full dis­play at the time. The piece, by Fred Clark­son (who cov­ered David Lane’s open calls from a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion in 2013), cov­ers the his­to­ry of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church’s then-decades-long invest­ments in acquir­ing pow­er and influ­ence inside the Unit­ed States. A his­to­ry that obvi­ous­ly cen­ters around snug­gling up to the Repub­li­can Par­ty. But as we’re going to see, Moon had some major allies in this effort. Allies who made their affil­i­a­tion with Moon’s agen­da abun­dant­ly clear after Moon was sen­tenced to an 18-month prison sen­tence in 1984 over sys­tem­at­ic tax fraud. And as we’re going to see, these allies were more or less the same net­work of evan­gel­i­cal reli­gious lead­ers who ral­lied around Ronald Rea­gan in 1980 and went on to form the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) the fol­low­ing year.

The sup­port for Moon pri­mar­i­ly man­i­fest­ed through the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF), itself formed in 1984 as a project by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. On the board of the CRF was a list of now famil­iar names: Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent.

Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board was stacked with CNP heavy­weights. And that’s the group that was wag­ing

Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the only issue the CRF and Hansen were upset about that year. The loss of tax-exempt sta­tus for Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racist poli­cies out­raged Hansen. Keep in mind that Bob Jones III is anoth­er promi­nent CNP mem­ber.

But the CRF’s ties to Moon aren’t just found in their vocif­er­ous defense of Moon fol­low­ing his sen­tenc­ing. CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills took $500,000 from Moon sources. Beyond that, CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in key Uni­fi­ca­tion Church enti­ty CAUSA.

Anoth­er exam­ple the ties between Moon and this pow­er­ful net­work of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers can be found in the right-wing lob­by Chris­t­ian Voice, found­ed in 1978 by CNP mem­ber Robert Grant. While Chris­t­ian Voice char­ac­ter­izes itself as a lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals, that was a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that did­n’t sit well with then-direc­tor of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals Robert P. Dugan, who described Chris­t­ian Voice as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Even Paul Weyrich anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”

What are the ties between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church? Well, it turns out the group’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor, Gary Jarmin, was a long-time Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activist in the 1970s. And while Jarmin claimed to have left the group after join­ing the CRF, it also turns out he helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983, along with Chris­t­ian Voice Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Jarmin and Grant went on to attend CAUSA’s 1985 con­fer­ence too.

So that’s the very inter­est piece of his­to­ry to keep in mind when we’re look­ing at this his­toric arc of how the same net­work behind rise of the ‘Reli­gious Right’ in the 1980s and the for­ma­tion of the CNP has grown to the point where its on the cusp on imple­ment­ing that long sought theoc­ra­cy. On the cusp of win­ning that pow­er demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly or on the cusp of a vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Either way, they are on the cusp. Which means their fel­low trav­el­ers, like the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its AR-15-wor­ship­ping off­shoots, are on the cusp too:

Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin
No 27, Spring 1987

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy”

by Fred Clark­son

Over the years, Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon, the founder, spir­i­tu­al leader, and tit­u­lar head of the vast Uni­fi­ca­tion Church con­glom­er­ate, has repeat­ed­ly declared that his goal is glob­al theoc­ra­cy. He has expressed his desire for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­trol orig­i­nat­ing from cen­tral­ized reli­gious pow­er. Moon and his orga­ni­za­tion have been con­sis­tent in their efforts to car­ry out this vision. They are not always suc­cess­ful, but they per­sist. What is essen­tial to under­stand about the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its relat­ed oper­a­tions is that its reli­gion and its pol­i­tics are vir­tu­al­ly insep­a­ra­ble. Equal­ly impor­tant to under­stand is that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion [see note 1 below] is an inte­gral part of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL), which in turn has played a piv­otal role in the devel­op­ment and activ­i­ties of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

In the U.S. the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has sought allies on many fronts, notably the New Right, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the reli­gious Right. These efforts have met with mixed suc­cess, but there is no doubt that it has made deep inroads into Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life. Where they intend going may be gauged by Moon’s ser­mons. In 1973, for exam­ple, he declared, “My dream is to orga­nize a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal par­ty, includ­ing the Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and Catholics, and all the oth­er reli­gious sects.2

The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to detail the reli­gious and polit­i­cal ori­gins of the Moon phe­nom­e­non in the U.S. in order to clar­i­fy the more con­fus­ing elements.3

Inside the League

The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

Mean­while, the first Moon mis­sion­ar­ies arrived in the U.S. in 1959. By the ear­ly 1960s, Moon fronts had been estab­lished and were work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Kore­an Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (KCIA). Indeed, short­ly after the mil­i­tary coup which ele­vat­ed Park Chung Hee to pow­er in 1961, his KCIA direc­tor (and founder), Kim Jong Pil, stat­ed that he intend­ed to “orga­nize and uti­lize” the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as a “polit­i­cal tool” (see side­bar), accord­ing to the Octo­ber 31, 1978 Report of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tions of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, known as the Fras­er Report.6

The Fras­er Report, a House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives inves­ti­ga­tion into Kore­an covert oper­a­tions in the U.S., chaired by Don­ald Fras­er (Dem.-Minn.), reveals that one of the ear­ly KCIA/Moon projects was the Kore­an Cul­tur­al Free­dom Foun­da­tion (KCFF). The osten­si­bly non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly turned from a “cul­tur­al” to a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion under the influ­ence of “Hon­orary Chair­man” Kim Jong Pil, who want­ed the “Free­dom Cen­ter” in Seoul, South Korea to be its prin­ci­pal project. Thus, by the spring of 1964, KCFF was rais­ing funds from Amer­i­cans for the Free­dom Cen­ter, which was, in fact, an APACL project pro­mot­ed and sub­si­dized by the Kore­an gov­ern­ment with at least $796,231.,7 The Free­dom Cen­ter serves as the “sec­re­tari­at” of WACL to this day.

In 1966, KCFF launched anoth­er KCIA project, Radio Of Free Asia (ROFA), which broad­cast anti­com­mu­nist pro­gram­ming to the region. The Kore­an gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed the broad­cast facil­i­ties, and the KCIA con­trolled the pro­gram­ming through their psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare sec­tion, called the “7th Bureau.”8 Dur­ing its peri­od of orga­ni­za­tion, Lt. Col. Bo Hi Pak, a mil­i­tary attaché at the Kore­an Embassy in Wash­ing­ton, actu­al­ly ran KCFF, despite a series of Amer­i­can fig­ure­heads fronting the Free­dom Cen­ter and ROFA fundrais­ing cam­paigns. Pak had been giv­en a spe­cial dis­charge from the Kore­an Army, appar­ent­ly to devote full time to KCFF in Wash­ing­ton. He was among Moon’s prin­ci­pal oper­a­tives as well, and used KCFF for Church pur­pos­es. KCFF hood­winked a num­ber of promi­nent Amer­i­cans, includ­ing for­mer pres­i­dents Eisen­how­er and Tru­man to serve on its advi­so­ry board. Using their names, KCFF raised funds for their projects and some mon­ey was appar­ent­ly skimmed to fund the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.9

The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14

Wood has said that “[u]nder the aegis of Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace (AYJP)…set up by myself and a man named Charles Stephens, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church car­ried out exten­sive lob­by­ing in the spring of 1970. This lob­by­ing was car­ried out by church mem­bers under orders from their superiors…to try to indi­cate to Congress…strong grass­roots sup­port for a hard line in Viet­nam.” He also empha­sized that because “the church’s tax exempt sta­tus would be threat­ened if we car­ried out our polit­i­cal activ­i­ties open­ly, we were care­ful to hide our real iden­ti­ty behind the guise of AYJP. Dur­ing this time, AYJP received ‘anony­mous’ dona­tions from ‘friends of the Pres­i­dent’ [Nixon] through con­nec­tions with Charles Col­son and Jeb Magrud­er. So the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in the 1970s was the recip­i­ent of mon­ey to car­ry out the pro­grams of the gov­ern­ment.”

“Mr. Moon has said,” con­tin­ued Wood, “that ‘God is phas­ing out democ­ra­cy.’ Well, whether or not God is doing it, it is clear that Sun Myung Moon wants to do this… so right now, the Unit­ed States is act­ing as a seedbed for fas­cist reli­gious cults whose objec­tive is in the end to destroy the Con­sti­tu­tion, and remake Amer­i­ca in the image of an auto­crat­ic hier­ar­chi­cal fas­cist state.”15

In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the youth sec­tion of WACL, cur­rent­ly head­ed by David Finzer18 of the Wash­ing­ton-based Con­ser­v­a­tive Action Foun­da­tion, has report­ed­ly received a grant from the South Kore­an WACL chapter.19 Finzer’s group is pro­vid­ing sem­i­nars on “polit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy” for WACL Youth, and orig­i­nat­ed the Chevron/Gulf boycott—a cam­paign which received sup­port from the RAMBO Coali­tion (see side­bar in “Shep­herd­ing,” in this issue)—designed to high­light the efforts of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of Ango­la.

“An Auto­mat­ic Theoc­ra­cy”

While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23

...

Thus the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has been con­sis­tent over the years, from their basic book through the speech­es of the Mas­ter and his most promi­nent dis­ci­ple. One for­mer mem­ber observed that Moon’s teach­ings “were often referred to by oth­er mem­bers as an ‘ide­ol­o­gy’ that would change the polit­i­cal sys­tems of the world. It was made clear to me that so long as the church-relat­ed aspects of the group were empha­sized, Moon’s fol­low­ers would be in a pro­tect­ed posi­tion as far as first amend­ment reli­gious free­dom was con­cerned, and be able to take advan­tage of the tax laws as well.”24

Moon’s theo­crat­ic aspi­ra­tions are well doc­u­ment­ed in a series of speech­es and ser­mons from the 1970s, com­piled under the title Mas­ter Speaks. In 1973, for exam­ple, Moon declared that “[w]hen it comes to our age, we must have an auto­mat­ic theoc­ra­cy to rule the world. So we can­not sep­a­rate the polit­i­cal field from the reli­gious…. Sep­a­ra­tion between reli­gion and pol­i­tics is what Satan likes most.” In Moon’s king­dom, Korea would be the cen­tral nation; the Rome of a new Empire. What is more, “In the ide­al world cen­tered upon God, every­one will speak only Kore­an, so no inter­preter will be necessary.”25

Moon’s reli­gion-is-every­thing ide­ol­o­gy includes the econ­o­my. He says that under his sys­tem, “even in Japan and Ger­many, the peo­ple will not buy prod­ucts from their own coun­try, but will buy accord­ing to cen­tral­ized instruc­tions. What kind of sys­tem of thought or econ­o­my can func­tion to give these cen­tral­ized instruc­tions? Reli­gion is the only sys­tem that can do that.”26

...

“A Move­ment Like Le Pen’s”

Moon’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tions have tak­en many forms. In Brazil, for exam­ple, CAUSA/Brazil has orga­nized a long-term cam­paign to col­lect eight mil­lion sig­na­tures on an “anti­com­mu­nist man­i­festo.” They plan to use these peti­tions to pres­sure the Brazil­ian Congress.28 At stake is the Brazil­ian Con­sti­tu­tion, which is to be draft­ed by the new Con­gress. The head of CAUSA/Brazil says 57 can­di­dates received “logis­ti­cal but not finan­cial sup­port.” He said “we are form­ing the future base for a large par­ty, though at present we are still apo­lit­i­cal” and “we want­ed to form a move­ment like Le Pen’s in France.”29

Le Pen is the leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front which, accord­ing to the British jour­nal Search­light, has close ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Search­light report­ed that “accord­ing to Le Pen’s estranged wife, CAUSA is an impor­tant financier of the Nation­al Front.” The head of CAUSA in France was a mem­ber of the French del­e­ga­tion to the 1986 WACL con­fer­ence in Luxembourg.30

...

The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38

Con­vict­ed Felons

In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”

Moon as Mar­tyr

The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

Gray Areas

While “Father” Moon served time, his fol­low­ers orga­nized an elab­o­rate pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign which includ­ed the reli­gious free­dom cam­paign, efforts to get Supreme Court review of the Moon case, and final­ly a cam­paign to get Moon par­doned. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion hired, among oth­ers, the pub­lic rela­tions firm of Gray and Co., head­ed by Robert Kei­th Gray, a for­mer Rea­gan cam­paign offi­cial. In ear­ly 1984, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the inci­dent, Gray and Co. direc­tor Robert B. Ander­son solicit­ed the sig­na­ture of promi­nent Wash­ing­ton Rab­bi Joshua Haber­man for Hansen’s reli­gious free­dom peti­tion to Pres­i­dent Rea­gan. The peti­tion was gen­er­al in nature, but was then used in CRF’s direct mail blitz. Haber­man with­drew, say­ing he had been deceived and that his name was being used to advance caus­es which he did not sup­port.

Robert Ander­son, a for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary in the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion, was already involved with the Moon orga­ni­za­tion at the time. He spoke at the found­ing con­fer­ence of CAUSA North Amer­i­ca in Mon­tego Bay, Jamaica in 1983. He also head­ed a Moon-fund­ed front known as the Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Action Insti­tute from 1983 to 1986. He was suc­ceed­ed in this post by for­mer Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy.

Gray, who co-chaired the 1981 Rea­gan Inau­gur­al Com­mit­tee, was the first Pres­i­dent of the George­town Club, an elite social club financed by his friend, KCIA oper­a­tive Tong­sun Park (see side­bar). Accord­ing to a for­mer KCIA direc­tor, the George­town Club was a KCIA front used by Park to facil­i­tate “lob­by­ing activ­i­ties” in the 1970s.50 For at least the past few years, Gray and Co. has been reg­is­tered as a for­eign agent for Japan and South Korea.

The par­don cam­paign failed. How­ev­er, four months after his release from prison, Moon vis­it­ed Korea where, in the Olympic sta­di­um, a ral­ly of about 30,000 peo­ple was host­ed by his orig­i­nal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion (still a part of WACL), the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry over Com­mu­nism (IFVC). Accord­ing to the Lon­don Times, no senior Kore­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials were present. How­ev­er, Osa­mi Kubo­ki read a mes­sage of sup­port from Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Naka­sone. Kubo­ki said both Naka­sone and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kishi had “inter­ced­ed on Moon’s behalf with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.” Accord­ing to the Times of Lon­don, Naka­sone “tele­phoned the Pres­i­dent because of Mr. Moon’s sta­tus as an inter­na­tion­al leader, while Mr. Kishi, a sup­port­er of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, had writ­ten to the Pres­i­dent three times.”51

Kishi, who was a WACL leader in the late 1960s, is also involved with CAUSA’s Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil (ISC). ISC’s pur­pose includes orga­niz­ing retired mil­i­tary offi­cers of the West­ern Alliance, and hold­ing anti­com­mu­nist con­fer­ences. Kishi also co-chaired Moon’s 1984 World Media Con­fer­ence in Tokyo.

Kishi’s involve­ment under­scores the impor­tance of Japan to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Despite its Kore­an roots and the his­tor­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty between Korea and Japan, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church has had a lim­it­ed pop­u­lar fol­low­ing in Korea and very large sup­port in Japan. Indeed, its pre­dom­i­nant source of fund­ing has been Japan. The Wash­ing­ton Post, quot­ing a for­mer rank­ing Japan­ese Moon offi­cial, report­ed that some $800 mil­lion had flowed from Japan to the U.S. Uni­fi­ca­tion Church over the pre­ced­ing nine years (1975–1984).52 Where the mon­ey went is a mat­ter of intense spec­u­la­tion. Some was invest­ed in busi­ness­es and real estate. Hun­dreds of mil­lions have by now spent on Moon’s major pub­li­ca­tions, notably the Wash­ing­ton Times, the New York City Tri­bune, and the newsweek­ly Insight mag­a­zine. But clear­ly too, Moon mon­ey has been invest­ed in domes­tic Amer­i­can pol­i­tics; and the funds doc­u­ment­ed here are but the tip of the ice­berg. (See side­bar.)

Inside the New Right

Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.

Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57

The Moon rela­tion­ship with Chris­t­ian Voice sur­faced as a last-minute issue in the 1986 Col­orado Sen­ate race between Rep. Ken Kramer (Rep.) and Rep. Tim Wirth (Dem.). Kramer, who is a mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian Voice Con­gres­sion­al Advi­so­ry Board, claimed not to know of the Moon con­nec­tion. He told the Den­ver Post, “I’m not a Moonie,”58 and assert­ed to the Rocky Moun­tain News that the Moon con­nec­tion, if proven, would “be a mat­ter of great con­cern to me, and I would have to take a new look at the sit­u­a­tion…. I do not sup­port the Moonies in any way.”59 Nev­er­the­less, Wirth won the race.

CAUSA and the Catholic Church

While best known for its grow­ing rela­tion­ship with Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ism, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has active­ly sought close links with the Catholic Church, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Latin America.60 Their suc­cess has been decid­ed­ly mixed. The Bish­ops of Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Pana­ma, and Japan have all denounced the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in pas­toral let­ters. While this has put a crimp in their oper­a­tions, Moon­ism is not with­out allies. The Arch­bish­op of La Pla­ta, Argenti­na, spon­sored the first CAUSA sem­i­nar in that coun­try, and lat­er award­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­ate to Moon from the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty, while he was in jail.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal strat­e­gy doc­u­ment dat­ed Jan­u­ary 1985, CAUSA views its rela­tion­ship with the Catholic Church as “extreme­ly impor­tant…. One [pas­toral] let­ter of the Bish­ops in any coun­try will con­sid­er­ably dam­age our activ­i­ties. If it hap­pens in a Third World coun­try, all the faith­ful Catholics will go away, leav­ing us with ‘non-faith­ful’ ones, mak­ing our sit­u­a­tion even more miserable.”61

Indeed, the Hon­duran Bish­ops denounced CAUSA as “anti-Chris­t­ian” and declared that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church “cre­ates a species of mate­r­i­al and spir­i­tu­al slav­ery” that pos­es “seri­ous dan­gers to the psy­cho­log­i­cal, reli­gious, and civic integri­ty of any­one who yields to its influence.”62 The Japan­ese Bish­ops, not­ing major the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, also “dis­cour­age all Catholics from any col­lab­o­ra­tion with it. While the Holy See is con­trary to any par­tic­i­pa­tion by the faith­ful, it is even more opposed to what­so­ev­er [sic] atten­dance and col­lab­o­ra­tion on the part of Catholic priests.”63

The prin­ci­pal Moon advo­cate with­in the Church appears to be Father Sebas­t­ian Matczak, a Pol­ish priest who has spo­ken fre­quent­ly at CAUSA con­fer­ences, and who teach­es phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­fi­ca­tion Sem­i­nary in Bar­ry­town, New York. The CAUSA paper notes that “Dr. Matczak, in his lat­est vis­it to Rome the past Jan­u­ary [1984] could ver­i­fy that the bad rep­u­ta­tion of our move­ment is main­ly com­ing from Latin Amer­i­ca, while there they say that offi­cial doc­u­ments from the Vat­i­can pre­vent them from any rela­tion with us.”64

Despite seri­ous obsta­cles to Moon­ist advances on the Catholic Church, the orga­ni­za­tion claims that CAUSA has a “strong con­nect­ing point” with the Church in most Latin coun­tries. The inter­nal report notes, how­ev­er, that the strat­e­gy of seek­ing rela­tion­ships with the hier­ar­chy, and invit­ing priests to CAUSA con­fer­ences, has gen­er­al­ly failed. As a result, “it seems that we have to open two fronts, one in Rome, one in Latin Amer­i­ca.” The lat­ter option empha­sized secret and high­ly selec­tive CAUSA con­fer­ences with priests as a way to build a core of sup­port­ers, whose favor­able reports would per­co­late up to the Vat­i­can. Dr. Matczak report­ed­ly “finds this strategy…the only way and an absolute neces­si­ty.” The twin goals of this plan were to “STOP THE NEGATIVITY FROM WITHIN” (the Catholic Church) and to “Declare war to the Lib­er­a­tion theology.”65

It is pos­si­ble that the Rome option is still viable. A new Moon unit called AULA (Asso­ci­a­tion for the Uni­fi­ca­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca) was formed in Rome in Decem­ber 1984.66 AULA’s sec­ond annu­al con­fer­ence, in Decem­ber 1985 in Rome, was attend­ed by a dozen for­mer pres­i­dents of Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and was received by the Pope. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion is skilled at using the pres­tige of out-of-pow­er politi­cians. Two weeks lat­er three for­mer pres­i­dents of Colom­bia, and two of Cos­ta Rica rep­re­sent­ed AULA at Moon’s wel­come home ral­ly in Seoul, South Korea.67

Accord­ing to Uni­fi­ca­tion News, AULA is draft­ing a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion for a “Unit­ed States of Latin America.”68 AULA’s con­sti­tu­tion­al spe­cial­ist is Cleon Skousen, head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies, who worked close­ly with CAUSA in 1986, orga­niz­ing con­fer­ences of con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. state leg­is­la­tors. Accord­ing to Church and State mag­a­zine, Skousen is not only far-right but “believes Amer­i­ca is a ful­fill­ment of Mor­mon proph­esy regard­ing the pre-mil­len­ni­al prepa­ra­tion of the Earth.”69

Pri­or to becom­ing the cur­rent “prophet” of the Mor­mon church, Ezra Taft Ben­son endorsed Skousen’s work as hav­ing “the Lord’s approval” and appeared at many Skousen events. Benson’s son Mark, is on Skousen’s board of direc­tors. Skousen is the most vis­i­ble link in an appar­ent Moon/Mormon alliance. Anoth­er impor­tant link is U.S. Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch (Rep.-Utah), who is a Mor­mon Bish­op and has spo­ken at sev­er­al CAUSA/Skousen con­fer­ences in the past year which have had a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of Mor­mon politi­cians from Utah and Ida­ho in atten­dance.

...

————

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy” by Fred Clark­son; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin; No 27, Spring 1987

“Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14″

Rev­erend Moon final­ly arrived in the US in 1971, thanks to the inter­ven­tion Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond. Five years after the found­ing of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and three years after Moon’s Shokyo Ren­go orga­ni­za­tion was made a WACL chap­ter. And while Moon’s plans for the US had a large ‘anti-Com­mu­nist’ com­po­nent, it went much fur­ther. In a theo­crat­ic direc­tion. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple — the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism — “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words,” the US’s sys­tem of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order”:

...
The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

...

In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

...

While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23
...

But Moon’s orga­niz­ing in the US did­n’t start with his arrival in 1971. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate of Shokyo Ren­go, the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion, was incor­po­rat­ed in 1969 in Wash­ing­ton DC, with the mis­sion of win­ning the “pow­er cen­ters” and guid­ed by the advice from Moon, “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple”. Absolute domin­ion is a com­mon theme in this milieu:

...
The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

...

The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38
...

But by 1984, Moon’s US activ­i­ties man­aged to land him an 18-month prison sen­tence over tax fraud. Some­how, Moon’s defense team did­n’t find suc­cess with their “Mes­si­ah defense”:

...
In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”
...

And it was dur­ing Moon’s prison sen­tence when we got to see the fruits of Moon’s years of cul­ti­vat­ing influ­ence inside US cen­ters of pow­er. In par­tic­u­lar, theo­crat­ic cen­ters of pow­er, with the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) play­ing a lead­ing role. Only formed in 1984 itself, the CRF was an off­shoot of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. But Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the CRF’s only ral­ly­ing cry. Hansen was also out­raged over loss of tax-exempt sta­tus by Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racial dis­crim­i­na­tion poli­cies. And yes, as we should expect, Bob Jones III is a CNP mem­ber. But the CRF was­n’t just Hansen’s pet project. Its board host­ed most of major tel­e­van­ge­lists at the time, includ­ing Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent. Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board is stacked with CNP heavy­weights. So when we find how, not only did the CRF jump to Moon’s defense, but that CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills was tak­ing large dona­tions from Moon sources and promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in CAUSA, it’s pret­ty unam­bigu­ous that the CRF viewed Moon as an impor­tant ally. And why not? This is a net­work of theocrats with a shared goal:

...
Moon as Mar­tyr

The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

...

Inside the New Right

Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.
...

And then there’s the ties between Moon and Chris­t­ian Voice, a rightwing group that claims to be Chris­t­ian lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals. It was a self-char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that faced some push­back from fig­ures like Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals, who described the group as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Inter­est­ing­ly, Paul Weyrich — anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.” And as we can see, Gary Jarmin — a for­mer Moonie activist — was Chris­t­ian Voice’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor. Jarmin even helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983 while serv­ing in that role. Also in atten­dance at the CAUSA con­fer­ence were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man (and CNP mem­ber) Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Grant and Jarmin also addressed the 1985 CAUSA con­fer­ence. Grant was, at the time of this 1987 piece, chair­ing the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the CRF. It’s quite a tight net­work:

...
Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57
...

How deep does the rela­tion­ship between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and this CNP net­work of domin­ion­ists go? Well, as we can see, it was quite deep in the 1980s. Open­ly so, despite the denials. And that deep rela­tion­ship has had four decades to fes­ter. So, you know, ‘way too deep’ is the like­ly answer. We’ll pre­sum­ably find out more about this ongo­ing rela­tion­sh­iop after the theoc­ra­cy gets imposed. Or rather, those not killed dur­ing the theo­crat­ic rev­o­lu­tion will get to find out more.

As we’ve seen, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is mas­sive mul­ti-state effort that’s been oper­at­ing for years now. Since 2005. And as we’ve also seen, the project has a num­ber of state-based spin offs — the Texas Renew­al Project, the Iowas Renew­al Project, etc — with major financ­ing com­ing from the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion (AFA) run by CNP mem­bers Don and Tim Wild­mon. But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing report from Novem­ber 2011, there’s anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant enti­ty behind the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project: The Niemoller Foun­da­tion.

Found­ed in 2005 by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion was formed as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-prof­it enti­ty. As part of that tax-exempt sta­tus, the foun­da­tion was sup­posed to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in direct sup­port of, or attacks against, an par­tic­u­lar can­di­dates for office. As we’ll see, it was the Niemoller Foun­da­tion that was financ­ing an ear­ly iter­a­tion of the Texas Renew­al Project — then known as the Texas Restora­tion Project — that was effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as a sophis­ti­cat­ed get-out-the-vote effort tar­get­ing church­es in sup­port of then-Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

As we should expect, Leininger hap­pens to be an ardent theo­crat. He’s also described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. And As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. He’s the founder of a Texas enti­ty that has repeat­ed­ly popped up in rela­tion to theo­crat­ic ini­tia­tives not just in Texas but nation­al­ly: the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). Yep.

This is the same ‘think tank’ where where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions.

And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. But he’s not the only CNP mem­ber cit­ed as a major fun­der. Wealthy busi­ness­man Bob J. Per­ry — also a financier of the “Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth” smear cam­paign — was also an ear­ly donor Niemoller foun­da­tion donor as the group was financ­ing the Texas Restora­tion Project to oper­ate as a Rick Per­ry get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion. In addi­tion, key CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton were orga­niz­ing pro-Per­ry events in asso­ci­a­tion with the project. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing.

It’s also note­wor­thy how Leininger and his fel­low theocrats eager­ly viewed the Great Reces­sion that was still play­ing out back in 2011 as an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to return the US to God. Gov­ern­ment could not be part of the solu­tion for the Great Reces­sion. Only God. Evan­ge­list James Robi­son was a cham­pi­on of this view and had been search­ing for a politi­cian to push this idea with the pub­lic. Rick Per­ry — the first major politi­cian to embrace the then-nascent Tea Par­ty move­ment — was Robison’s choice.

That’s all part of the con­text, and rel­e­vance, of the now infa­mous 2011 domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing in asso­ci­a­tion with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project around Rick Per­ry’s 2011 pres­i­den­tial run: The whole ‘Renew­al’ ini­tia­tive effec­tive­ly start­ed off as a 2006 Rick Per­ry guber­na­to­r­i­al re-elec­tion effort with exten­sive fund­ing from one of Tim Dun­n’s long-time fel­low theocrats:

The Amer­i­can Prospect

God Help Us

Will Rick Perry’s blend of Chris­t­ian-right, small-gov­ern­ment, and pro-cor­po­rate fer­vor land him in the White House?

by Bob Moser
Novem­ber 28, 2011

In April, Rick Per­ry trav­eled to North Texas for a tap­ing of tel­e­van­ge­list James Robison’s TV show, Life Today. For six months, start­ing as soon as he was re-elect­ed Texas gov­er­nor in Novem­ber 2010, Per­ry had been criss­cross­ing the coun­try to pro­mote his sec­ond book, Fed Up!, while test­ing the pres­i­den­tial waters with poten­tial donors and con­ser­v­a­tive activists. His vis­it with Robi­son, a hell­fire-breath­ing pas­tor known as “God’s hit man” (for “giv­ing ’em so much hell nobody will ever want to go there”), had the poten­tial to pay seri­ous div­i­dends. Robi­son had led the Chris­t­ian-right cam­paign that helped lift Ronald Rea­gan to the White House in 1980, and he was re-emerg­ing as the chief insti­ga­tor of a nation­al effort to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cals to defeat Barack Oba­ma in 2012. With for­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee-who left divin­i­ty school in 1976 to work for Robi­son-hav­ing for­gone the race, the pas­tor was search­ing for a can­di­date the resur­gent evan­gel­i­cal right could anoint.

Per­ry, who has spent more time evan­ge­liz­ing about his faith than any gov­er­nor in the his­to­ry of Texas, was ready for his audi­tion. Beam­ing, he gazed up into the stu­dio lights. “I think we’re in a time of great revival­ness in this world,” he declared.

“I think it’s an awak­en­ing,” Robi­son agreed.

“I know there’s a lot of con­cern,” Per­ry said. “I think in Amer­i­ca, that from time to time, we have to go through some dif­fi­cult times, and I think we’re going through those dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times for a pur­pose-and that’s to bring us back to those bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples … not spend­ing all of our mon­ey, not ask­ing for Pharaoh to give every­thing to every­body and to take care of folks, because at the end of the day, it’s slav­ery. And we become slaves to gov­ern­ment.”

The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.”

Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.”

In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

As Per­ry moved toward announc­ing his can­di­da­cy, the evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers decid­ed that he had the “king­dom men­tal­i­ty” they were look­ing for-and, unlike Michele Bach­mann, a chance to win. It was­n’t just that Per­ry was the only major politi­cian in Amer­i­ca auda­cious and faith­ful enough to con­vene his own mega-prayer ral­ly. It was­n’t just that he claimed to be “called” by God to run. It was­n’t just that he slashed bud­gets and stripped reg­u­la­tions. It was­n’t just that he had pro­mot­ed absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, cam­paigned suc­cess­ful­ly for a gay-mar­riage ban, defund­ed Planned Par­ent­hood, and signed some of the coun­try’s most restric­tive abor­tion laws. It was that he did all this while he called for “restor­ing Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples.”

The Response drew 30,000 peo­ple to Hous­ton’s Reliant Sta­di­um on the first Sat­ur­day in August. Per­ry ser­mo­nized along with John Hagee, the Chris­t­ian Zion­ist mega­pas­tor who blamed gays for Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and once called Catholi­cism a “god­less the­ol­o­gy.” While Per­ry’s mes­sage most­ly con­sist­ed of long pas­sages of scrip­ture, his clos­ing prayer rein­forced the idea that only God, not gov­ern­ment, could solve the nation’s woes: “Lord, you are the source of every good thing. You are our only hope. … Father, our heart breaks for Amer­i­ca. We see dis­cord at home. We see fear in the mar­ket­place. We see anger in the halls of gov­ern­ment. As a nation, we have for­got­ten who made us, who pro­tects us, who bless­es us. And for that, we cry out for your for­give­ness.”

Ten days lat­er, Per­ry announced his pres­i­den­tial bid in South Car­oli­na, promis­ing to “make Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as incon­se­quen­tial in your life as I can.” Almost overnight, he emerged as the Repub­li­can right’s lead­ing alter­na­tive to for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. Just as quick­ly, he became the most mis­un­der­stood con­tender for the White House.

...

In ear­ly debates-includ­ing his dis­as­trous per­for­mance in Orlan­do that led to a sec­ond-place fin­ish well behind Her­man Cain in the straw poll-Per­ry’s oppo­nents took aim at his few con­ser­v­a­tive here­sies, most notably sign­ing a bill to allow in-state col­lege tuition for some undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents. Per­ry’s fum­bling retort-accus­ing those who dis­agreed with his posi­tion of not hav­ing “a heart”-made mat­ters worse. As nation­al reporters rushed to knock out pro­files of the mete­or ris­ing on the Repub­li­can right, a nar­ra­tive was emerg­ing: Per­ry was paint­ed as a say-any­thing sort who had shift­ed with the polit­i­cal winds to win eight elec­tions in Texas with­out suf­fer­ing a defeat. The new meme was summed up by a Politi­co head­line: “Rick Per­ry’s non-ide­ol­o­gy.”

It is an easy but mis­lead­ing sto­ry to tell. Per­ry was first elect­ed to the Texas House in 1984 as a Demo­c­rat. He switched par­ties in 1989, as Repub­li­cans began to chip away at Democ­rats’ cen­tu­ry-old dom­i­na­tion of Texas pol­i­tics, in order to run against lib­er­al pop­ulist Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Jim High­tow­er. Hand­picked by Karl Rove, Per­ry rode Gov­er­nor George W. Bush’s coat­tails to become lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 1998, suc­ceed­ing to the gov­er­nor’s office when Bush left for Wash­ing­ton in Decem­ber 2000. When Bush and Rove man­u­fac­tured a revival of evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics, Per­ry became a “faith-based” politi­cian when he ran for gov­er­nor in 2002 and 2006. Then, fac­ing a tough re-elec­tion chal­lenge in 2010 from Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, he embraced the Tea Par­ty.

This nar­ra­tive makes a good yarn-yet anoth­er sto­ry of yet anoth­er politi­cian who pre­tends to stand for some­thing but only cares about win­ning elec­tions. But it miss­es the heart, and the threat, of Per­ry’s pol­i­tics. While it’s true that he has cal­i­brat­ed his cam­paigns to fit the moment, Per­ry is an ide­o­logue. Indeed, he is the bold­est cham­pi­on of a new con­ser­vatism that draws its pow­er from blend­ing the most rad­i­cal wings of the GOP: those who believe that Chris­tians are Amer­i­ca’s cho­sen lead­ers, that cor­po­ra­tions should be unfet­tered, and that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should shrink and cede pow­er back to the states. His pol­i­tics have indeed evolved-in con­cert with that of the Repub­li­can right, as it’s hard­ened from a move­ment that saw gov­ern­ment as “the prob­lem,” in Rea­gan’s words, to one that views gov­ern­ment as the ene­my. Per­ry, far from being a fol­low­er in that shift to the hard right, has long been one of its prime insti­ga­tors.

When Per­ry first mate­ri­al­ized in Austin in the mid-’80s, he imme­di­ate­ly estab­lished what kind of politi­cian he was. The swag­ger­ing, glad-hand­ing ten­ant farmer’s son from West Texas became part of a bud­get-cut­ting gang on the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, deemed the “Pit Bulls” because they sat on the low­er dais in the hear­ing room as they pushed for aus­ter­i­ty in Tex­as­’s state gov­ern­ment. “Then and there,” says long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Sen­a­tor Eliot Shap­leigh, “he and his band of Pit Bulls put Texas on a path toward his lega­cy project of cut­ting tax­es for the wealthy and mak­ing gov­ern­ment work only for a select few.”

...

As agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er, Per­ry’s main accom­plish­ment was in line with Rea­gan Repub­li­can­ism-fight­ing and gut­ting reg­u­la­tions on farms and agribusi­ness. In the months after he became gov­er­nor, Per­ry behaved in some respects like his pre­de­ces­sor, who was known for work­ing cor­dial­ly with Texas Democ­rats and for court­ing the state’s ris­ing Lati­no vote. Per­ry signed the now-con­tro­ver­sial tuition bill. But at the end of the 2001 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, he threw down a gaunt­let; in one day in June, in what became known as “the Father’s Day Mas­sacre,” he vetoed 78 bills, includ­ing a ban on exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed and a num­ber of non­con­tro­ver­sial appro­pri­a­tions. It was a loud and star­tling rebuke, and it set a pat­tern. Per­ry’s goal as gov­er­nor would be to do what he now says he’d do as pres­i­dent: make gov­ern­ment “incon­se­quen­tial.”

In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.

Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”

“For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

“Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”

On April 15, 2009, the typ­i­cal­ly dap­per gov­er­nor of Texas strode onto a makeshift stage out­side Austin City Hall wear­ing an unfa­mil­iar cos­tume-hunt­ing jack­et, jeans, boots, and base­ball cap-and deliv­ered the most impor­tant speech of his life. “I got­ta say it gives me that thrill up my leg when I see all these peo­ple stand­ing out here,” he told the 1,000 plac­ard-wav­ing cit­i­zens who’d come out on a blus­tery morn­ing to rail at Oba­ma and stim­u­lus spend­ing and to wit­ness Rick Per­ry’s Tea Par­ty debut. He’d been viewed with sus­pi­cion by some small-gov­ern­ment purists in Texas, not only for his exec­u­tive order to man­date HPV vac­cines but also for his ambi­tious (and unsuc­cess­ful) pro­pos­al to launch a mas­sive infra­struc­ture project called the Trans-Texas Cor­ri­dor. One Tea Parti­er car­ried a sign that read “Big Gov­ern­ment Per­ry,” hand­ing out leaflets on the theme.

But as the gov­er­nor blast­ed Oba­ma’s “social­ism” and railed at the main­stream medi­a’s deroga­to­ry cov­er­age of “tea bag­gers,” his recep­tion went from warm to hot. “I’m just not sure you’re a bunch of right-wing extrem­ists,” he hollered. “But if you are, I’m with you! ‘Cause you are a true patri­ot today in this coun­try. And I might add, you’re sur­round­ed by fel­low patri­ots-indi­vid­u­als who embrace the con­cepts like low­er tax­es and small­er gov­ern­ment and free­dom for every indi­vid­ual. I’m talk­ing about states’ rights! States’ rights! States’ rights!”

“Secede!” one hoarse voice called out over the clam­or of whoops and cheers. “Seceeeeede!” Per­ry nev­er used the word him­self but did say: “Since the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion was first rat­i­fied, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has slow­ly, steadi­ly, and suc­cess­ful­ly erod­ed the notion of states’ rights. … I hap­pen to agree with the sev­enth gov­er­nor of this great state, Sam Hous­ton. He once said, ‘Texas has yet to learn sub­mis­sion to any oppres­sion, come from what source it may!’ ”

As Per­ry left the stage, bask­ing in his foot-stomp­ing recep­tion, ral­ly orga­niz­er Jason Moore, a local talk-radio host, hal­looed, “Maybe it’s Per­ry for pres­i­dent now!”

As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

“Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.

The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.

While his Tea Par­ty rhetoric made Per­ry famous, his lead­er­ship of an often over­looked orga­ni­za­tion-the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion (RGA)-made him a major play­er in nation­al Repub­li­can cir­cles. He has been both its finance chair and chair. The RGA’s stat­ed pur­pose is to elect Repub­li­can gov­er­nors. But under Per­ry and Mis­sis­sip­pi Gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour, the group has become a pow­er­ful force tug­ging Repub­li­cans toward the far right. Its ide­o­log­i­cal mis­sion is reflect­ed in the agen­das of its most gen­er­ous donors: Koch Indus­tries, which gave $1.1 mil­lion in 2010; Bob Per­ry, who gave $6 mil­lion; and Rupert Mur­doch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion sub­sidiary News Amer­i­ca, which donat­ed $1.25 mil­lion.

...

The Repub­li­can right has been a fick­le beast in 2011, first swoon­ing over Michele Bach­mann before dis­card­ing her, day­dream­ing in vain of Paul Ryan and Mar­co Rubio, and-when the ear­ly debates kept Per­ry from cement­ing his posi­tion as Mitt Rom­ney’s only viable foe-tak­ing up with Her­man Cain and chant­i­ng “9–9‑9.” But no pres­i­den­tial can­di­date is bet­ter suit­ed to the cur­rent Repub­li­can moment than Rick Per­ry. He has always spe­cial­ized in anger and out­rage. He exem­pli­fies a move­ment that sees no gray areas. Almost every­where he goes, Per­ry quotes Ronald Rea­gan: “We need bold col­ors, not pale pas­tels.” At a stop in New Hamp­shire, Per­ry made sure the point was­n’t missed: “I am that bright col­or.”

If he can regain his foot­ing and ham­mer home the con­sid­er­able gray areas in Rom­ney’s record, Per­ry may yet prove the Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter of 2012. After all, as he told a packed house of 10,000 at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in mid-Sep­tem­ber, God “does­n’t require per­fect peo­ple to exe­cute his per­fect plan. Moses was this hot­head­ed mur­der­er who was afraid to speak in pub­lic. God used him to lead the Israelites to free­dom. ... Paul was a per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians; God used him to spread the gospel to the ends of the uni­verse.”

Now, Per­ry implied, God was using him to bring his mes­sage to ear­ly-21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. The stakes, he said, were clear: “Amer­i­ca is going to be guid­ed by some set of val­ues. The ques­tion is gonna be, whose val­ues?”

Dur­ing the fall, as Per­ry floun­dered, it was easy to for­get how many times he has risen from the grave. He was giv­en lit­tle chance of win­ning his first statewide race, against the beloved cow­boy pop­ulist Jim High­tow­er; in 1998, run­ning for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Per­ry was tied in the polls up to Elec­tion Day; a year before his re-elec­tion as gov­er­nor in 2010, Repub­li­cans pre­ferred Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son by a seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able mar­gin, 56 per­cent to 31 per­cent. He won them all. One rea­son: his pugilis­tic cam­paign style, which Per­ry intro­duced to the coun­try in the late-Octo­ber Las Vegas debate and which left Rom­ney’s aides call­ing him a “bul­ly.” Per­ry does not defeat his oppo­nents; he oblit­er­ates them.

Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.

...

The debate in Orlan­do was Per­ry’s low­est moment-the nation­al press was soon writ­ing him off-but ear­li­er that same day, he dis­played all the qual­i­ties that make him a for­mi­da­ble cam­paign­er. He bound­ed onto the stage at a ral­ly for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion, wear­ing an open ging­ham shirt and jack­et, wife Ani­ta on his arm. Per­ry has long been lam­pooned back home for an antic, arm-flap­ping style of tel­e­van­ge­lis­tic speechi­fy­ing, but he’s calmed down his style con­sid­er­ably. Stand­ing still at the podi­um, Per­ry clinched his hands prayer­ful­ly. As always, his words had the old evan­gel­i­cal fer­vor.

“I’m cam­paign­ing the only way I know how,” he said. “That’s as a true believ­er.” The crowd whooped and cheered and sur­round­ed the stage six deep, as Per­ry moved seam­less­ly into his mes­sage, mix­ing small-gov­ern­ment and Chris­t­ian-right ortho­doxy. “Our founders did­n’t need a nan­ny state to carve out the great­est civ­i­liza­tion known to man. We did­n’t need a nan­ny state to win the Sec­ond World War and then the Cold War. And we did­n’t need a nan­ny state to revive our econ­o­my, to cre­ate jobs, and to renew our nation’s promise.” In clos­ing, to wild cheers and amens, Per­ry invoked Abra­ham Lin­coln: “My con­cern is not whether God is on my side. My great­est con­cern is to be on God’s side.”

———–

“God Help Us” by Bob Moser; The Amer­i­can Prospect; 11/28/2011

“The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.””

The Great Reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and towards “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples”. That was the great hope of pow­er­ful pas­tors like James Robi­son as the finan­cial cri­sis was play­ing out. And oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the prin­ci­ples of the kind of ‘Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism’ pro­mot­ed by fig­ures like Glenn Beck and David Bar­ton. Two of Rick Per­ry’s long-time key allies. Only God could heal the econ­o­my. Slash­ing the size of gov­ern­ment was a bib­li­cal­ly ordained response to the cri­sis. A cri­sis caused by a gov­ern­ment that was “against God”:

...
Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.”

In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

...

Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.
...

That ded­i­ca­tion to “Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism” and shrink­ing the size of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is a big part of con­text of Rick Per­ry emerg­ing as the polit­i­cal avatar of this net­work: Per­ry was­n’t just an advo­cate of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. He’s a “wealth first” ide­o­logue and he’s not afraid of admit­ting it:

...
The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.
...

So it should come as no sur­prise to see how Rick Per­ry was effec­tive­ly the first major politi­cian to embrace the Tea Par­ty. His ide­ol­o­gy was effec­tive­ly a theo­crat­ic ver­sion of Grover Norquist’s ide­ol­o­gy:

...
As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

“Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.
...

And that all brings us to the key role of San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. Leininger found­ed the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), the ‘think tank’ where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions. And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions:

...
In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.
...

And as we can see, it was James Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion that helped launch the ini­tial “Texas Restora­tion Project” (even­tu­al­ly renamed the Texas Renew­al Project), with an ini­tial goal of help­ing Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign. So while the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion (AFA) may be the enti­ty that has long housed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, it sounds like a lot of the mon­ey for the effort came for Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion. Also note how the goal of the Texas Restora­tion Project was­n’t real­ly to encour­age pas­tors to run for office them­selves. The mis­sion was get­ting those pas­tors to ral­ly their con­gre­ga­tions around Rick Per­ry. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project claims to be focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, the orga­ni­za­tion dou­bles as as church-based get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion:

...
Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”
...

By 2008, the “Texas Restora­tion Project” had expand­ed to oth­er states like Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa, thanks to fund­ing from the Niemoller Foun­da­tion and the AFA. And as Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work reminds us, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion is osten­si­bly a non-par­ti­san non-prof­it group that engages in bla­tant par­ti­san­ship like putting on pro-Rick Per­ry events. That was mod­el expand­ed to oth­er states thanks to all that Niemoller/AFA fund­ing and David Lane’s orga­niz­ing efforts:

...
“For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

“Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”
...

Now let’s take a clos­er look at the non-prof­it fraud the TFN accused the Niemoller Foun­da­tion of per­pe­trat­ing under the guise of ‘non-par­ti­san’ activ­i­ties. AS the TFN described, the Texas Restora­tion Project masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. A strat­e­gy with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it: In addi­tion to Leininger, CNP mem­ber Bob Per­ry also made major dona­tions to the effort, with CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize the oper­a­tion:

Texas Free­dom Net­work

TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project

Uncov­ered Tax Records Show Major Fun­ders Were Also Rick Per­ry Back­ers; Sim­i­lar Groups Back­ing Mike Huckabee’s GOP Pres­i­den­tial Bid

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan­u­ary 10, 2008

The Texas Free­dom Net­work is ask­ing the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to inves­ti­gate whether a Hous­ton-based non­prof­it foun­da­tion and its back­ers improp­er­ly sought to drag church­es into Gov. Rick Perry’s reelec­tion cam­paign in 2006.

“It’s bad enough when politi­cians and their finan­cial back­ers mis­use faith by drag­ging our hous­es of wor­ship into par­ti­san cam­paigns,” TFN Pres­i­dent Kathy Miller said today. “It’s even worse if they break the law to do so. It now appears that the orga­niz­ers of the Texas Restora­tion Project may have done both to sup­port Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion, and by fun­nel­ing the mon­ey through a pri­vate foun­da­tion hid the source of its financ­ing from vot­ers.”

Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

Orga­ni­za­tions sim­i­lar to the Texas Restora­tion Project have cropped up in oth­er states. The South Car­oli­na Renew­al Project and Iowa Renew­al Project have host­ed speech­es by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee. Speak­ers at those have includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Texas group. The Amer­i­can Prospect is report­ing that new pas­tors’ brief­in­gs have been set for this month in advance of pri­ma­ry elec­tions in South Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia and Flori­da.

In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.

...

To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.”

The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

* The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
* The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
* Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
* The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
* Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.

...

———

“TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project” ; Texas Free­dom Net­work; 01/10/2008

“To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.””

As the TFN found, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion claims to be a 501(c)(3) non-prof­it, mean­ing it could­n’t engage in any polit­i­cal cam­paign direct­ly on behalf or against a can­di­date while main­tain­ing its tax-exempt sta­tus. As the TFN describes it, those ear­ly pas­tor events of the “Texas Restora­tion Project” were effec­tive­ly mask­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. That’s the mod­el that was expand­ed to oth­er states:

...
The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

...

In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.
...

And as we should expect, the list fig­ures involved with the those 2006 efforts to re-elec­tion Rick Per­ry includes a num­ber of CNP mem­bers. On top of Jim Leininger, we find “Swift Vote Vet­er­ans for Truth” financier Bob Per­ry serv­ing as a major donor and Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize pro-Per­ry events. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing. In oth­er words, Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion effort was effec­tive­ly a CNP Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort. Before it became a tem­plate to export to oth­er states:

...
Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

...

The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

* The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
* The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
* Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
* The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
* Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.
...

And what hap­pened to the TFN’s calls for the IRS to revoke the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s tax-exempt sta­tus? The IRS ruled in the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s favor in 2009. That’s also part of the con­text of the broad­er Amer­i­can Renew­al Project active today. This church-focused get-out-the-vote mod­el may have start­ed as a Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort but it was the kind of mod­el these theocrats were eager to export to one state after anoth­er. Which is exact­ly what they’ve done, thanks, in part to the IRS’s unwill­ing­ness to address this bla­tant abuse of tax exempt non-prof­it sta­tus. But also thanks to the seem­ing­ly end­less financ­ing finances from peo­ple with more mon­ey than God and plans to reshape soci­ety to ensure they get even more.

Oh look, the CNP had anoth­er group exposed. This time it was ProP­ub­li­ca, report­ing on a new domin­ion­ist mega-donor orga­niz­ing enti­ty: The Zik­lag group. It’s anoth­er 501(c)(3) tax-exempt ‘char­i­ty’ that in real­i­ty exists to help Repub­li­cans win elec­tions. As the founder of the group, Ken Eldred, puts it, he want­ed to want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. Real­ly wealthy Chris­tians. Aspir­ing mem­bers need a net worth of $25 mil­lion to even apply. And if they aren’t Domin­ion­ist evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians they prob­a­bly aren’t going to want to apply any­way. The Zik­lag group is like the Koch net­work but specif­i­cal­ly for Domin­ion­ists.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen reports on a ‘Zik­lag’ domin­ion­ist ini­tia­tive in recent years. As we’ve seen, Eldred also found­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose, an orga­ni­za­tion that appears to large­ly exist to pro­mote domin­ion­ist projects. Recall how Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s for­mer direc­tor, CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las, co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to effec­tive­ly give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Then, in Feb­ru­ary of 2020, Eldred played a key role in orga­niz­ingthe for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

We’ve also seen Eldred’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose show in rela­tion to a num­ber of oth­er key CNP orga­niz­ers, like Ralph Reed and Gin­ni Thomas. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. And then there’s the fact that Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing ProP­ub­li­ca report, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and oth­er lib­er­al bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. Inter­est­ing­ly, Eldred, the osten­si­ble leader of the group, stands out for not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­bers lists. Almost every­one else involved with this sto­ry is a CNP mem­ber.

The group appears to made copi­ous use of the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ domin­ion­ist ter­mi­nol­o­gy. The chair of the ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ is CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger. As we’re going to see, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over edu­ca­tion is one of the prongs in the groups three-pronged strat­e­gy for 2024. Specif­i­cal­ly, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over trans­gen­der chil­dren. That ini­tia­tive is dubbed “Watch­tow­er”, along with the “Check­mate” prong — focused on ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ efforts — and the “Steeple­chase” prong ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly mobi­liz­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors. While there’s no indi­ca­tion David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is involved with the Steeple­chase efforts, it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap.

As we should prob­a­bly expect, the ‘Check­mate’ ini­tia­tive cen­ters around anoth­er major CNP fig­ure: Cle­ta Mitchell. As we’ve seen, it was Mitchell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the CNP efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. An insur­rec­tion with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it. Notably, the sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. It’s a reminder that, while this Zik­lag Group is por­trayed as a kind of inde­pen­dent domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing enti­ty, it’s real­ly just anoth­er CNP front group. Albeit one that is more explic­it­ly ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ ori­ent­ed than usu­al.

Fit­ting­ly, it sounds like one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the Sev­en Moun­tains man­date, Lance Wall­nau, is also play­ing a lead­ing role in this Zik­lag Group. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.”

And yes, the Zik­lag Group claims to be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-par­ti­san char­i­ty despite hav­ing three major ini­tia­tives focused on par­ti­san elec­tion results. As mul­ti­ple tax experts tell ProP­ub­li­ca, this appears to be a gross mis­rep­re­se­n­a­tion for an enti­ty blant­ly engaged in par­ti­san orga­niz­ing. But as we’ve also seen, trolling the IRS with bla­tant­ly fraud­u­lent claims of non-par­ti­san­ship is a long-stand­ing pas­time of this domin­ion­ist net­work. As the ProP­ub­lic report points out, while con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly chan­nel hun­dreds of mil­lionos of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups — like the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion — those groups don’t claim to be 501(c)(3) char­i­ties like this Zik­lag is claim­ing. As experts describe, Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da. This is also a good time to recall how two of the key enti­ties back­ing the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and the Niemoller Foun­da­tion — bothclaim to be and 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. In oth­er words, Zik­lag isn’t the first domin­ion­ist 501(c)(3). But it does appear to be nov­el in its focus on mega-donors-only for domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing.

So that’s all part of the back­ground of this seem­ing­ly ‘new’ domin­ion­ist net­work ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed on last month. And in a tech­ni­cal sense it is rel­a­tive­ly new. Or new-ish. And yet, it’s also obvi­ous­ly just one more enti­ty in this same old CNP domin­ion­ist net­work that has been accru­ing pow­er, and ambi­tion, for decades. For char­i­ty, of course:

ProP­ub­li­ca

Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try

The lit­tle-known char­i­ty is backed by famous con­ser­v­a­tive donors, includ­ing the fam­i­lies behind Hob­by Lob­by and Uline. It’s spend­ing mil­lions to make a big polit­i­cal push for this elec­tion — but it may be vio­lat­ing the law.

by Andy Kroll, ProP­ub­li­ca, and Nick Surgey, Doc­u­ment­ed
July 13, 5 a.m. EDT

A net­work of ultra­wealthy Chris­t­ian donors is spend­ing near­ly $12 mil­lion to mobi­lize Repub­li­can-lean­ing vot­ers and purge more than a mil­lion peo­ple from the rolls in key swing states, aim­ing to tilt the 2024 elec­tion in favor of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

These pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed plans are the work of a group named Zik­lag, a lit­tle-known char­i­ty whose donors have includ­ed some of the wealth­i­est con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in the nation, includ­ing the bil­lion­aire Uih­lein fam­i­ly, who made a for­tune in office sup­plies, the Greens, who run Hob­by Lob­by, and the Wallers, who own the Jock­ey appar­el cor­po­ra­tion. Recip­i­ents of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, which is the Chris­t­ian legal group that led the over­turn­ing of Roe v. Wade, plus the nation­al pro-Trump group Turn­ing Point USA and a con­stel­la­tion of right-of-cen­ter advo­ca­cy groups.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed obtained thou­sands of Ziklag’s mem­bers-only email newslet­ters, inter­nal videos, strat­e­gy doc­u­ments and fundrais­ing pitch­es, none of which has been pre­vi­ous­ly made pub­lic. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to under­pin every major sphere of influ­ence in Amer­i­can soci­ety with Chris­tian­i­ty. In the Bible, the city of Zik­lag was where David and his sol­diers found refuge dur­ing their war with King Saul.

...

Ziklag’s 2024 agen­da reads like the work of a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. It plans to pour mon­ey into mobi­liz­ing vot­ers in Ari­zona who are “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans” in order to secure “10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes” — almost the exact mar­gin of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use con­tro­ver­sial AI soft­ware to enable mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states.

In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.

...

But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

“They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

“Domin­ion Over the Sev­en Moun­tains”

Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

...

One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”

“The Amor­phous, Tumul­tuous Wild West”

The Chris­t­ian right has had com­pelling spokes­peo­ple and fierce com­mit­ment to its caus­es, whether they were end­ing abor­tion rights, allow­ing prayer in schools or dis­play­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments out­side of pub­lic build­ings. What the move­ment has often lacked, its lead­ers argue, is suf­fi­cient fund­ing.

...

Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

“Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom.”

A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

The Zik­lag files detail not only what Chris­tians should do to con­quer all sev­en moun­tains, but also what their goals will be once they’ve tak­en the sum­mit. For the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, one key doc­u­ment says that “the bib­li­cal role of gov­ern­ment is to pro­mote good and pun­ish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pol­i­cy deci­sions.”

For the arts and enter­tain­ment moun­tain, goals include that 80% of the movies pro­duced be rat­ed G or PG “with a moral sto­ry,” and that many peo­ple who work in the indus­try “oper­ate under a biblical/moral world­view.” The edu­ca­tion sec­tion says that home­school­ing should be a “fun­da­men­tal right” and the gov­ern­ment “must not favor one form of edu­ca­tion over anoth­er.”

Oth­er inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments voice strong oppo­si­tion to same-sex mar­riage and trans­gen­der rights. One reads: “trans­gen­der accep­tance = Final sign before immi­nent col­lapse.”

Head­ing into the 2024 elec­tion year, Zik­lag exec­u­tive direc­tor Drew Hiss warned mem­bers in an inter­nal video that “loom­ing above and beyond those sev­en moun­tains is this evil force that’s been man­i­fest­ing itself.” He described it as “a con­trol­ling, evil, dia­bol­i­cal pres­ence, real­ly, with tyran­ny in mind.” That pres­ence was con­cen­trat­ed in the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, he said. If Zik­lag­gers want­ed to save their coun­try from “the pow­ers of dark­ness,” they need­ed to focus their ener­gies on that gov­ern­ment moun­tain or else none of their work in any oth­er area would suc­ceed.

“Oper­a­tion Check­mate”

In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.”

In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

For Oper­a­tion Watch­tow­er, Wall­nau explained in a mem­bers-only video that trans­gen­der pol­i­cy was a “wedge issue” that could be deci­sive in turn­ing out vot­ers tired of hear­ing about Trump.

The left had won the bat­tle over the “homo­sex­u­al issue,” Wall­nau said. “But on trans­gen­derism, there’s a prob­lem and they know it.” He con­tin­ued: “They’re gonna wan­na talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Mean­while, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about par­ents and their chil­dren, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “tar­get on the fore­head of Goliath.”

The Zik­lag files describe tac­tics the group plans to use around parental rights — poli­cies that make it eas­i­er for par­ents to con­trol what’s taught in pub­lic schools — to turn out con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. In a fundrais­ing video, the group says it plans to under­write a “mes­sag­ing and data lab” focused on parental rights that will sup­ply “win­ning mes­sag­ing to all our part­ner groups to cre­ate uni­fied focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the dif­fer­ence-mak­er in the 2024 elec­tion.”

Accord­ing to Wall­nau, Zik­lag also plans to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives in sev­en key states — Ari­zona, Col­orado, Flori­da, Michi­gan, Mon­tana, Neva­da and Ohio — that take aim at the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty by seek­ing to ban “gen­i­tal muti­la­tion.” The sev­en states tar­get­ed are either pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­grounds or have com­pet­i­tive U.S. Sen­ate races. None of the ini­tia­tives is on a state bal­lot yet.

...

The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

“They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”

———–

“Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try” by Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey; ProP­ub­li­ca; 07/13/2024

“Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.”

A triple-pronged strat­e­gy for win­ning elec­tions in 2024: Watch­tow­er, Check­mate, and Steeple­chase. In oth­er words, mon­ster­ing trans­gen­der kids, deny­ing elec­tions in the same man­ner that result­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, and engag­ing in Amer­i­can Renew­al Project-style ‘pas­tor out­reach’ efforts. And it’s about as unpop­ulist a move­ment as one can imag­ine: only Domion­in­sts ded­i­cat­ed to the “Sev­en Moun­tains” Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cap­ture of soci­ety, and worth at east $25 mil­lion, need apply. So of course we’re see­ing CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger serv­ing as Zik­lag’s ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ chair. Zik­lag has all the hall­marks of a clas­sic CNP oper­a­tion. And while it’s fair to char­ac­ter­ize the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy as a ‘break’ from the kind of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism as a ‘break’, rhetor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, from the kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism ped­dled by CNP founders like Pat Robert­son and Jer­ry Fall­well in the 1980s, as Sarah Pos­ner has point­ed out, the under­ly­ing theo­crat­ic ambi­tions aren’t real­ly dif­fer­ent. ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ is more of drop­ping of the mask for the same move­ment than a real change in ambi­tions:

...
Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

...

One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”
...

And Bol­hinger being just the first of string of CNP fig­ures run­ning or coor­di­nat­ing with Zik­lag, with for­mer Unit­ed in Pur­pose direc­tor Bill Dal­las being a notable exam­ple. It’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s founder, Ken Eldred, who appar­ent­ly found­ed Zik­lag in the spir­it of ‘like the Koch Broth­ers’ influ­ence net­work but just for super-rich Domion­ists’ fol­low­ing Trump’s win in 2016. Recall how it was Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s then-direc­tor and CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las who co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Eldred went on to orga­nize the for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

And then there’s all the CNP mem­bers we’ve seen pop up in rela­tion to Unit­ed in Pur­pose activ­i­ties. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. Also recall how Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we can see, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and Google bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. It’s anoth­er CNP ini­tia­tive, found­ed by Eldred, who stands outs in this group by not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists:

...
Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

...

Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

“Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom...
...

And then we get to /lance Wall­nau, described as as dri­ving force behind the Zik­lag efforts. As we’ve seen, Wall­nau is an NAR leader who has played a big role in pop­u­lar­iz­ing the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date’ Domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.” Wall­nau is a lead­ing domin­ion­ist and Zik­lag is a domin­ion­ist effort, like the most of the CNP does:

...
A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

...

In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

...

And as evi­dence of the Zik­lag group’s ongo­ing focus on over­turn­ing unfa­vor­able elec­tion results through any means nec­es­sary, here’s show­ing as a recip­i­ent of the Zik­lag group’s giv­ing. The same elec­tion refut­ing spe­cial­ist Cle­ta Mithell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the large-scale CNP effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. It’s worth not­ing how that sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. So when we see large dona­tions from a Domin­ion­ist group like Zik­lag get­ting chan­neled to Mitchel­l’s elec­tion-over­turn­ing efforts via the CPI, it’s a reminder that the CPI isn’t just a tool of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s mega-donors. It’s a tool of the domion­in­ist mega-donors who helped orga­nize Jan­u­ary 6, as is the Zik­lag group:

...
A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.”

In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”
...

So giv­en the domin­ion­ist nature of this group’s ambi­tions, we should­n’t be sur­prised the third prong in the Zik­lag group’s strat­e­gy is a con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor mobi­liza­tion effort, coor­di­nat­ed with groups like Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Points USA, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion, and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of the enti­ties play­ing an impor­tant role in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. Is there any coor­di­nat­ing with the effort Amer­i­can Renew­al Project? There does­n’t appear to be any indi­ca­tion of that yet but it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap in shared inter­ests and efforts. In oth­er words, what are the odds the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project fun­ders aren’t also Zik­lag donors? It’s the same CNP-orga­nized domin­ion­ist effort. The same one:

...
The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”
...

Final­ly, there’s the glar­ing tax code vio­la­tion for Zik­lag’s ‘char­i­ta­ble’ tax-deductible efforts that’s anoth­er par­al­lel with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — housed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and financed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Niemoller Foun­da­tion. All 501(c}(3) enti­ties, alleged­ly engaged in non­par­ti­san tax deductible activ­i­ties:

...
In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

...

But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

“They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

...

Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

...

Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

“They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”
...

Don’t hold your breath wait­ing for the IRS to final­ly crack down on this bla­tant trolling that’s been going on for decades. Trolling that dou­bles as effec­tive tax eva­sion. To help finance a move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the com­plete cap­ture of soci­ety. It’s hard to get more par­ti­san than that. And yet this is all for ‘char­i­ty’. LOL. The joke is on us.

“You won’t have to do it any­more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any­more, my beau­ti­ful Chris­tians.” That was the high­ly dis­turb­ing mes­sage deliv­ered by Don­ald Trump a lit­tle over a month ago at the Turn­ing Point Action’s “Believ­ers Sum­mit” in West Palm Beach, Flori­da. Chris­tians just had to vote this one last time and they could be done with vot­ing for­ev­er. It was a mes­sage that was under­stand­ably inter­pret­ed as just one more open hint at plans to effec­tive­ly end what’s left of the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. An inter­pre­ta­tion that log­i­cal­ly fol­lows the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist plot.

And while it’s cer­tain­ly very pos­si­ble Trump real­ly did intend to send a mes­sage of “I’ll per­ma­nent­ly ‘fix’ democ­ra­cy so you nev­er lose again” mes­sage to this audi­ence, it’s worth not­ing how that rhetoric syn­er­gizes with the mes­sag­ing tar­get­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers com­ing from anoth­er keen­ly inter­est­ed group: David Lane and his claims over the years that only around a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers even both­er vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. It’s a mes­sage Lane has appar­ent­ly been shar­ing with audi­ences at his var­i­ous Amer­i­can Renew­al Project ‘pas­tor events’ for years. Nor is Lane the only one to make this claim. Mike Huck­abee, for exam­ple, has made the same claims.

It’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing mes­sage to hear com­ing from some­one in Lane’s posi­tion. He’s lead­ing a group ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly orga­niz­ing pas­tors and, in turn, their con­gre­ga­tions. A mes­sage about a vast untapped pool of vot­ers sit­ting in these con­gre­ga­tions has a lot of obvi­ous appeal. And yet, as we’re also going to see, it’s not actu­al­ly true. Evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in US vote at rough­ly the same lev­els as oth­er demo­graph­ics, con­sis­tent­ly hov­er­ing some­where around 50 per­cent vot­ing rates.

But there’s anoth­er very inter­est­ing polit­i­cal sto­ry relat­ed to this quest to increase the evan­gel­i­cal vote: before Don­ald Trump came along to con­quer the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in 2016, it was Ted Cruz who was not only lead­ing the Repub­li­can pack but did so through a high effec­tive strat­e­gy of tar­get­ing pas­tors. A strat­e­gy that not only had par­al­lels with David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project but was lit­er­al­ly part of it. As we’re going to see, Cruz was a reg­u­lar attendee at Lane’s var­i­ous ‘pas­tor events’ going back to 2013, along with Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz. It turns out Rafael is also quite close to Lane and a reg­u­lar speak­er at these events. Along with chief domin­ion­ist pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. This is a good time to recall how, back in 1980, both Mike Huck­abee and Rafael Cruz were involved with the orga­niz­ing of the Jame Robison’s “Reli­gious Round­table” that whipped up major evan­gel­i­cal enthu­si­asm for Ronald Rea­gan’s pres­i­den­tial run. Rafael Cruz has been a key dri­ving force behind the politi­ciza­tion of the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty for decades, effec­tive­ly groom­ing his son to be ‘God’s pres­i­dent’ some­day.

And that brings us to anoth­er aspect of Rafael’s activism that should be kept in mind: recall those sto­ries in 2022 about how the domin­ion­ist Moms for Lib­er­ty and the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion — run by Lance Wall­nau and David Bar­ton — work­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly take con­trol of school boards in Texas by focus­es on anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ hys­te­ria. Wall­nau is the promi­nent New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) leader who co-authored of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing the idea of domin­ion­ism. Fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion in 2016, Wall­nau start­ed push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. This was a sto­ry about a domin­ion­ist cap­ture of school boards in Texas. A high­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture that had them plan­ning a nation­al roll­out of the strat­e­gy.

As we also saw, one of the groups also work­ing on that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny with a busi­ness mod­el that pledges to spend some of the prof­its on con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. It’s worth tak­ing a clos­er look at the group and its efforts in those school board cap­tures. Found­ed in 2012, the com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly boast­ed of a busi­ness mod­el that pledged to sup­port groups that opposed abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary. After Trump’s elec­tion, Patri­ot Mobile became much more overt­ly domin­ion­ist. By 2022, it was one of the enti­ties deeply involved this this school board cap­ture effort, includ­ing coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project on the effort. As we’ve seen, the True Texas Project is one of those groups heav­i­ly reliant on the finances of Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn through his Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC. And also infest­ed with Nazis. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. For exam­ple, Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more.

Dur­ing this school board cap­ture cam­paign in 2022, none oth­er than Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es at the Patri­ot Mobile head­quar­ters. The lec­tures, broad­cast on Youtube, were domin­ion­ists lessons in how the sep­a­rate of church and state should real­ly only be seen as ‘one-way’, with gov­ern­ment pro­hib­it­ed from med­dling with church but church­es free to wield what­ev­er influ­ence they deem appro­pri­ate over gov­ern­ment. Not only is it a reminder that Rafael Cruz’s decades of polit­i­cal activism is still very much active today, but it rais­es the ques­tion as to who is more influ­en­tial these days when it comes to mobi­lizes con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers: Ted Cruz or his dad? Rafael is clear­ly very influ­en­tial with this com­mu­ni­ty and has been since before Ted Cruz first got elect­ed.

It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that it was Rafael Cruz who Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed may have played a role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion back dur­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry race of 2016, when Ted was his only remain­ing obsta­cle to the nom­i­na­tion. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing win­kle to this ongo­ing sto­ry of Rafael Cruz’s decades of domin­ion­ist activism, which includ­ed groom­ing his son to be “God’s pres­i­dent” some day. A role his son could have secured in 2016 had Trump not charmed the par­ty with his fas­cist mad­ness. We can only assume Rafael’s activism has a ‘Trump is a divine­ly inspired actor’ mes­sage since that’s the mes­saged embraced by the rest of this move­ment. But it was sup­posed to be his son. Instead it was Trump, who accused him of being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion, which is all the more fas­ci­nat­ing because we can’t real­ly rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty he worked with Lee Har­vey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba leaflet­ing activ­i­ties.

So while Trump’s “you won’t have to do it any­more” mes­sage to evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers cer­tain­ly has an air of omi­nous­ness due to the theo­crat­ic author­i­tar­i­an per­ils posed by a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that focus­ing on surg­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote is the same strat­e­gy the GOP has been rely­ing on for decades. It was the same strat­e­gy Rafael Cruz has been help­ing David Lane cul­ti­vate for years through the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s numer­ous ‘pas­tor gath­er­ings’, and the same strat­e­gy that was sup­posed to secure the GOP nom­i­na­tion for Ted Cruz in 2016 before Trump came along. And it’s ulti­mate­ly the same strat­e­gy at the heart of the anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ pan­ics get­ting whipped up at the local lev­el.

In oth­er words, if the prospect of a sec­ond Trump term — with all of the asso­ci­at­ed Project 2025 theo­crat­ic ambi­tions — almost sounds like what we might expect from a Ted Cruz pres­i­den­cy, that’s because that’s sort of what Trump’s pres­i­den­cy real­ly was: the theo­crat­ic poli­cies that appeal to Ted Cruz vot­ers, but deliv­ered with that dement­ed Trumpian flare that seems to have more pop­u­lar appeal. When we see Don­ald Trump active­ly dis­tanc­ing him­self from the polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic nature of Project 2025’s theo­crat­ic agen­da, he’s not just run­ning away from his own agen­da. He’s run­ning away from the Cruz agen­da. An Rafael Cruz groomed Ted to exe­cute at the exec­u­tive lev­el. But Trump is the one God chose instead. Either way, it’s domin­ion­ist agen­da, MAGA pati­na or not. An agen­da designed to appeal to the core of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers that David Lane and Rafael Cruz have been cul­ti­vat­ing for decades and that was sup­posed to pro­pelled Ted Cruz into the White House in 2016, before Don­ald Trump hijacked it:

Yahoo News

Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals

Jon Ward·Chief Nation­al Cor­re­spon­dent
Jan­u­ary 29, 2016

Last Sat­ur­day night in north­east­ern Iowa, moments before Glenn Beck deliv­ered a 56-minute speech in which he even­tu­al­ly got around to endors­ing Sen. Ted Cruz for pres­i­dent, a wil­lowy man with pow­der puff white hair strolled to the lectern and said a few words.

Not once did the man — who spoke of Beck as “a vision­ary” and who laid his hands on Beck in prayer before­hand — men­tion Cruz’s name.

David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.

Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

Many in the crowd doubt­less knew who Bar­ton was even with­out an intro­duc­tion. He is some­thing of a celebri­ty to those who have viewed his videos at church events or online, or who saw him on Fox News when he reg­u­lar­ly appeared on Beck’s show. But Barton’s rep­u­ta­tion has tak­en some big hits in the last few years, and the integri­ty of his arti­cles, videos and books has been wide­ly called into ques­tion, most aggres­sive­ly by some con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars and writ­ers. One his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty said Bar­ton was the con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of left-wing aca­d­e­m­ic Howard Zinn.

“Nei­ther of them are his­to­ri­ans. They just want to use and manip­u­late the past to serve their own polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal agen­das in the present,” wrote John Fea, chair of the his­to­ry depart­ment at Mes­si­ah Col­lege in Mechan­ics­burg, Pa.

Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)

...

Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.

Barton’s hir­ing for the PAC last Sep­tem­ber was anoth­er nod to old­er evan­gel­i­cals that Cruz should be their man. Cruz had appealed to the Jer­ry Fal­well wing of evan­gel­i­cal­ism since announc­ing his can­di­da­cy last spring at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, the Chris­t­ian col­lege found­ed by the late Fal­well, whose son Jer­ry Jr. now runs the school (and who endorsed Don­ald Trump this week). Cruz has worked hard to build a net­work of pas­tors and Chris­t­ian activists across Iowa who are key to high turnout on the night of the cau­cus­es.

Barton’s endorse­ment, said Iowa Repub­li­can oper­a­tive Ann Trim­ble-Ray, is “prob­a­bly more impact­ful with the con­sis­tent cau­cus-goer” than an endorse­ment from some­one like for­mer Alas­ka Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week came out for Trump. He’s not the only Chris­t­ian activist with more sway than Palin, said Trim­ble-Ray, who serves as Iowa Rep. Steve King’s point per­son in west­ern Iowa. Phyl­lis Schafly, the nona­ge­nar­i­an but still-ven­er­at­ed con­ser­v­a­tive activist, is also influ­en­tial among old­er reli­gious vot­ers, Trim­ble-Ray said, and she has endorsed Trump as well.

...

Cruz is smart enough to know that if he remains com­pet­i­tive in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry beyond Iowa, he will need sup­port from evan­gel­i­cals who think Bar­ton is an embar­rass­ment. One of the more robust fac­tions inside Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is this set: a most­ly younger group who reject the cul­ture war approach of Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty. (I’ve dubbed them the “Keller wing,” after New York city pas­tor and author Tim Keller.)

These faith vot­ers are not yet as reli­able a vot­ing bloc as the old­er faith vot­ers in states like Iowa, who have been con­di­tioned to orga­nize polit­i­cal­ly around faith issues. But there are influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers — some of them more polit­i­cal­ly active than oth­ers — who have no time for a fig­ure like Bar­ton.Rus­sell Moore of the South­ern Bap­tists, megachurch pas­tor Rick War­ren, who is on a faith advi­so­ry board for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mar­co Rubio, and even Keller him­self employ a style that takes a dif­fer­ent approach to post-Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca than some­one like Bar­ton.

Bar­ton argues that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation, though he insist­ed to me that he defined this only as “a nation that was influ­enced by Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples and cul­ture.” He says that much of America’s found­ing doc­u­ments — in par­tic­u­lar the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence — and its laws were derived from the Bible. The impli­ca­tion, despite his denials, is that this is what it should be again.

To many, Barton’s argu­ment that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation at its found­ing is, as jour­nal­ist Julie Inger­soll put it, vital to old­er Chris­tians’ “myth­ic under­stand­ing” of them­selves. It is a vital com­po­nent of their iden­ti­ty that they are part of the nation’s true her­itage.

Many younger evan­gel­i­cals, even those who wish for greater spir­i­tu­al vital­i­ty in the nation and for more Chris­t­ian influ­ence in cul­ture and pol­i­tics, don’t have or seek the same iden­ti­ty. They embrace the notion of being pil­grims, sojourn­ers, even aliens in a strange land, as a way of life and iden­ti­ty that lines up more close­ly with their faith and the teach­ings of the Bible. In oth­er words, they’re more com­fort­able being a cul­tur­al minor­i­ty, and advo­cat­ing for their beliefs and poli­cies based on their beliefs from such a posi­tion. For old­er evan­gel­i­cals, who grew up at a time when Amer­i­can cul­ture endorsed and affirmed their way of life and their beliefs, this is a more fright­en­ing propo­si­tion.

And old­er evan­gel­i­cals like Bar­ton often see the younger gen­er­a­tion as cow­ards, shrink­ing away from the nec­es­sary cul­tur­al com­bat, afraid of the slings and arrows of stand­ing up for what is right. In this world­view, crit­i­cism and oppo­si­tion is a badge of hon­or, and can be viewed as val­i­da­tion that one is on the right track.

...

Barton’s cred­i­bil­i­ty has been called into ques­tion more than once since he self-pub­lished his first book in 1989, “The Myth of Sep­a­ra­tion.” In the mid-90s he had to retract a dozen quotes he had used from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, most­ly the Found­ing Fathers, after his­to­ri­ans found errors and inac­cu­ra­cies. Nonethe­less, his pop­u­lar­i­ty with fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians con­tin­ued to grow. Much of Barton’s allure is based on his col­lec­tion of what he says is more than 100,000 orig­i­nal doc­u­ments that date back to the pre-1812 Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion­ary era, which he stores in a vault at the head­quar­ters of his orga­ni­za­tion, Wall­Builders, in Ale­do, Texas. He pep­pers his pre­sen­ta­tions or talk­ing points with a dizzy­ing num­ber of ref­er­ences and quo­ta­tions.

Bar­ton became a nation­al fig­ure dur­ing George W. Bush’s pres­i­den­cy. He was elect­ed co-chair of the Texas GOP and by 2004 he had been hired by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee to help get social con­ser­v­a­tives to the polls to reelect Bush. In 2005, Time Mag­a­zine named Bar­ton one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca. Bar­ton was an advis­er to for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, who won the Iowa cau­cus­es in 2008 before his pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy lost steam.

In May of 2012, Bar­ton was inter­viewed by a puz­zled but impressed Jon Stew­art on “The Dai­ly Show.” But around that same time, Barton’s lat­est book on Thomas Jef­fer­son came under heavy scruti­ny from a group of evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars. The same week in August that Bar­ton was skep­ti­cal­ly pro­filed by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, Thomas Nel­son, the book’s pub­lish­er, pulled the book from stores and ceased pub­li­ca­tion, even though the book had hit the New York Times best­seller list. The pub­lish­er had “lost con­fi­dence” in Barton’s book based on inquiries from con­ser­v­a­tive his­to­ri­ans.

“The with­draw­ing a book from the mar­ket is extreme­ly rare. It’s so rare I can’t think of the last time we’ve done this,” said Thomas Nelson’s pub­lish­er, Bri­an Hamp­ton.

The flame wars between Bar­ton and his crit­ics have con­tin­ued to this day, as Barton’s book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was repub­lished ear­li­er this month by World Net Dai­ly. Even among some Bar­ton friends and sup­port­ers, his cred­i­bil­i­ty has been hurt, in large part because the crit­i­cism of his work came not from lib­er­al aca­d­e­mics but from his­to­ri­ans and oth­er aca­d­e­mics who are Chris­tians and work at Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tions.

“That’s what scared me,” said Don McEl­roy, the for­mer chair­man of the Texas Board of Edu­ca­tion, who was at the cen­ter of a major fight over cur­ricu­lum stan­dards in 2010 and who praised Barton’s input as a mem­ber of a six-per­son review board. “I can’t imag­ine [Bar­ton] mak­ing mis­takes, but I was stunned by the crit­i­cism.”

“Most of the time I find him to be right as rain,” McEl­roy said of Bar­ton.

Bar­ton remains defi­ant. “Lib­er­als will fight the truth with lies, good with evil, hon­esty with deceit,” he wrote on Twit­ter this week with a link to his book. Ear­li­er this month he was on Beck’s show on the TV net­work that Beck start­ed and owns, The Blaze, argu­ing that Thomas Jef­fer­son “came out very clear­ly” against gay rights.

...

Cruz told Politi­co ear­li­er this year that Bar­ton is “a good man, a coura­geous leader and a friend.”

“David’s his­tor­i­cal research has helped mil­lions redis­cov­er the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our nation and the incred­i­ble sac­ri­fices that men and women of faith made to bequeath to us the freest and most pros­per­ous nation in the world,” Cruz said.

Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

“Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

“When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”

“There’s a wider range of evan­gel­i­cals that have to be embraced,” he said.

Ted Cruz strad­dles the worlds inside con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal­ism. At 45, he is young enough to under­stand the men­tal­i­ty of the Keller wing. But he was raised by a strong-willed polit­i­cal refugee from Cuba who came to fierce­ly embrace the com­bat­ive cul­ture war approach of the Fal­well wing. And he knows that the “take back Amer­i­ca” crowd is for the moment the dom­i­nant vot­ing bloc in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

And thus, he wel­comes the embrace of a fig­ure like Bar­ton, but at arms length.

———-

“Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals” by Jon Ward; Yahoo News; 01/29/2016

“Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.”

The anony­mous ‘Ted Cruz whis­per­er’. That’s how David Bar­ton was depict­ed in this piece of Jan­u­ary of 2016. Bar­ton’s form of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism has clear­ly had a pro­found influ­ence on Cruz, serv­ing as a kind of the­o­log­i­cal men­tor. And yet, thanks to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of Bar­ton’s the­ol­o­gy, it’s a men­tor­ship that could end up becom­ing a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty out­side of the­o­log­i­cal­ly-friend­ly cir­cles. So when we see Bar­ton was act­ing as the de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies at this Cruz cam­paign event with­out ever intro­duc­ing him­self, we can see how Bar­ton’s polit­i­cal endorse­ments sort of oper­ate in a ‘If You Know, You Know’ man­ner:

...
David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

...

Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

...

Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

...

Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.
...

Sim­i­lar­ly, we can see how Bar­ton was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the Decem­ber 2015 gath­er­ing at the Texas ranch of Far­ris Wilks, who turned out to be a major Cruz donor. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. It’s a reminder that, while Bar­ton serves as a poten­tial­ly potent, but also poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial, spokesper­son for Cruz when deal­ing with the pub­lic, he’s a theo­crat­ic mega-donor super-star in the right cir­cles:

...
One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)
...

And as the arti­cle describes, while Ted Cruz and David Bar­ton may not be par­tic­u­lar­ly close per­son­al­ly, it’s a very dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion when we’re talk­ing about Bar­ton and Rafael Cruz, who are described as extreme­ly close:

...
Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

“Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

“When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”
...

And as the fol­low­ing Boston Globe arti­cle, also from Jan­u­ary of 2016, describes, it’s not just that Rafael Cruz and David Bar­ton are long­time close asso­ciates. Rafael was seen by many as his son’s ‘secret weapon’ in the GOP pri­mar­i­ly pre­cise­ly because the elder Cruz has so much sway with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. Beyond that, as the arti­cle also describes, Ted Cruz has effec­tive­ly been groomed by his father to run for pres­i­dent since he was a child. So when we see how David Bar­ton was play­ing a key role ral­ly evan­gel­i­cals around Ted Cruz’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial bid, keep in mind that this was a moment Rafael had been plan­ning on for a very long time. Per­haps longer than Ted had been:

The Boston Globe

Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians

By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff,
Jan­u­ary 26, 2016, 8:45 p.m.

MARION, Iowa — The Texas pas­tor paced before the wood­en cross in a rur­al church, point­ing toward the heav­ens as he lament­ed the sor­ry state of the coun­try.

Cast your vote in the Iowa cau­cus, he exhort­ed the con­gre­ga­tion, and reclaim Amer­i­ca!

“If the right­eous are not run­ning for office and not even vot­ing, what is left?” he asked dur­ing Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at Grace Bap­tist Church in Iowa. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked. And we get what we deserve.”

Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.

Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

...

When Rafael Cruz was asked by a reporter to respond to crit­ics who dis­miss his views as extrem­ist, a cam­paign aide hov­er­ing near­by whis­pered to him not to answer. The advice was ignored.

“If they don’t agree, they don’t agree,” said an unapolo­getic Cruz. “But my son is try­ing to be pres­i­dent to all Amer­i­cans.”

Ted Cruz said in an inter­view that his father is a pow­er­ful voice for free­dom and that his mes­sage should res­onate deeply even among non-Chris­tians.

Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”

Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

“Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

“He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.

Pas­tor Joseph Brown, head of Mar­i­on Avenue Bap­tist Church in Wash­ing­ton, Iowa, leads 99 Pas­tors for Cruz, a grass-roots effort to secure an endorse­ment from a pas­tor in each coun­ty and use their built-in audi­ences every Sun­day to pro­pel Cruz to a win. Brown, who had not pre­vi­ous­ly insert­ed him­self in pol­i­tics, said he came up with the idea after lis­ten­ing to Rafael Cruz chal­lenge pas­tors to get involved.

...

On Sat­ur­day, as Ted Cruz held a ral­ly with radio host Glenn Beck at a Bap­tist col­lege in a Des Moines sub­urb, Rafael Cruz and Deace auto­graphed copies of their new books at a church 16 miles away.

“We have to get the right­eous involved in the polit­i­cal process,” Rafael Cruz told a cou­ple in their ear­ly 70s. He flipped to Chap­ter 13 of his book “A Time For Action.”

“I give action steps here, what peo­ple need to do to get involved,” Cruz said.

The cou­ple, Cheryl and Dave Kutsch­er, bought two copies, so they could read it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. They said they sup­port Ted Cruz, in large part because of his father.

“If Ted ever got out of line, Rafael would put him back in place,” said Dave Kutsch­er, a land devel­op­er.

The next day, at the Mar­i­on church, Cruz, dressed in a blue suit, railed against the abo­li­tion of prayer and Bible read­ing in schools as the cause of sky­rock­et­ing teen preg­nan­cy, dropout rates, and van­dal­ism. Now, he said, “homo­sex­u­al mar­riage” is the lat­est “frontal attack on reli­gious lib­er­ty.”

“The dev­il over­played his hand because this deci­sion has act­ed as a cat­a­lyst to awak­en the sleep­ing giant,” Cruz said, his voice boom­ing through the church. He nev­er men­tioned his son’s name.

On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

“What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.

———-

“Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians” By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff; The Boston Globe; 01/26/2016

“Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.”

Rafael Cruz is quite the crowd pleas­er. At least for the right kind of crowd. Like an Iowan Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry audi­ence.

But as we can see, Rafael has­n’t just been meet­ing with church­go­ers to pro­mote his son’s pres­i­den­tial bid. He had been meet­ing in pri­vate with pas­tors all over the US for at least a year at that point. And had been prepar­ing Ted for this role since child­hood:

...
Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

...

Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”
...

And when we see how Rafael sought out the endorse­ment of key Iowa con­ser­v­a­tive king-mak­er, Bob Van­der Plaats, recall how Van­der Plaats end­ed up endorse Ron DeSan­tis in the 2024 Iowa cau­cus, trig­ger­ing a big fight for Van­der Plaats with the ‘Pas­tors for Trump’ group that’s emerged in recent year. In fact, Pas­tors for Trump was start­ed not long after Van­der Plaats began open­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Don­ald Trump fol­low­ing Trump’s now-infa­mous din­ner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes. It’s a reminder that the race of evan­gel­i­cal endorse­ments has become more com­pli­cat­ed since Trump’s cap­ture of the Repub­li­can Par­ty:

...
Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

“Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

“He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.
...

And then we get a ref­er­ence to one of David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing Ted Cruz. An event attend­ed by Rafael too:

...
On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

“What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing April 2015 piece from the Wash­ing­ton Times describ­ing a rela­tion­ship we should more or less expect at this point: it turns out David Lane and Rafael Cruz have a long­stand­ing work­ing rela­tion­ship. The kind of rela­tion­ship that could have been very help­ful had Ted won the pri­ma­ry. Because as the Cruz cam­paign explained at the time, Ted Cruz’s path to the White House was pred­i­cat­ed on acti­vat­ed two dif­fer­ent groups of evan­gel­i­cals: reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and non-reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. And as David Lane explained, one of his goals was get­ting preach­ers to ener­gize the then 30-to-40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals not reg­is­tered to vote. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project might have a pub­lic focus on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, at its core the project appears to be more about using pas­tors to con­vert non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals into vot­ers:

The Wash­ing­ton Times

Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors descend on Las Vegas to learn to moti­vate Chris­tians to vote

By Kel­ly Rid­dell
Wednes­day, April 22, 2015

Hun­dreds of Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and their wives will descend on Las Vegas Thurs­day to learn how to moti­vate their con­gre­ga­tions to get out and vote, prefer­ably for social con­ser­v­a­tives.

David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

“Somebody’s prin­ci­ples are going to reign supreme, it’s either our prin­ci­ples or some­body else’s prin­ci­ples,” said Mr. Lane. “By us stay­ing home, we’re elect­ing peo­ple who oppose our val­ues. Evan­gel­i­cal believ­ers and pro-life Catholic Chris­tians, our con­stituen­cy, has to engage if we’re going to save Amer­i­ca.”

There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.

Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

“Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

...

But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

“Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

...

George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”

Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

Over­all, the group esti­mates it turned out 141,151 votes in North Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Iowa and Arkansas com­bined. Repub­li­can sen­a­tors won each of those con­tests, and over­all, only 324,146 votes decid­ed them.

...

The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

“There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

“If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”

Still, skep­tics are wary any­thing can be done to mobi­lize a base that his­tor­i­cal­ly hasn’t come out to vote or are even reg­is­tered.

“If Cruz wants to count those, good luck to him,” wrote Mr. Bump.

———-

“The Wash­ing­ton Times” By Kel­ly Rid­dell; The Wash­ing­ton Times; 04/22/2015

“There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.”

Only around half of the 65–80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca are even reg­is­tered to vote and, only around a quar­ter of those who are reg­is­tered vote at all. In oth­er words, a clear major­i­ty of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals don’t vote. Or at least that was claim David Lane was mak­ing in 2015. As we’re going to see below, it was a wild­ly exag­ger­at­ed claim that oth­ers in Lane’s orbit also like to repeat. Still, it’s a reflec­tion of the intense focus in Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry pol­i­tics on mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in par­tic­u­lar. As Ted Cruz was describ­ing at the time, ener­giz­ing and mobi­liz­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote was at the core of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign strat­e­gy. It’s not clear the strat­e­gy would have worked, as plen­ty of skep­tics point­ed out. But that was the plan:

...
David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

...

Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

“Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

...

But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

“Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

...

George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”
...

And not how these Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events at the time did­n’t just fea­ture pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls like Nik­ki Haley or Ted Cruz. Rafael Cruz him­self was fea­tured guest at some of these events, giv­ing Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na”:

...
Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

...

The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

“There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

“If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”
...

Next, let’s take a quick look at this Novem­ber 2013 piece in the Wash­ing­ton Month­ly about Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing David Bar­ton, that were already under­way for the 2014 elec­tion cycle. And as it notes, Ted Cruz was already attend­ing these events. Keep in mind that he was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2012, so he was­n’t actu­al­ly fac­ing any elec­tions in the 2014 elec­tion cycle. In oth­er words, Ted Cruz was already start­ing the process of win­ning over evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors for his 2016 pres­i­den­tial race in 2013, with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project as his venue of choice:

Wash­ing­ton Month­ly

Wacko Birds of a Feath­er

by Ed Kil­go­re
Novem­ber 4, 2013

Those who mar­veled at my ear­li­er post about David Barton’s belief that legal­ized abor­tion is the cause of cli­mate change should be aware that the “his­to­ri­an” is not only the chief inspi­ra­tion for the whole “Chris­t­ian Nation” meme that has large­ly been accept­ed as a tru­ism by much of the Amer­i­can Right, but swims in some of the same waters as reg­u­lar old Repub­li­can pols.

This becomes appar­ent if you look at one of ol’ David’s favorite orga­ni­za­tions, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the very insid­er Chris­t­ian Right group close­ly aligned with the aggres­sive­ly homo­pho­bic Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, and run by the famous­ly influ­en­tial David Lane, whose main vehi­cle is the “Pastor’s Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” that bring pols in on the car­pet to be instruct­ed by cler­gy in an off-the-record con­text.

Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz (per this account from the Des Moines Reg­is­ter‘s Jen­nifer Jacobs:

This morn­ing, Cruz spoke for near­ly an hour at the Iowa Renew­al Project, a two-day, all-expens­es-paid forum orga­nized by David Lane, a polit­i­cal activist from Cal­i­for­nia who has been qui­et­ly mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cals in Iowa for six years. Two top-name GOP politi­cians who are like­ly 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates – Cruz and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, both born-again Chris­tians – are the stars of today’s ses­sions.

Cruz lec­tured for 30 min­utes, his voice at times ris­ing to a shout. He answered ques­tions for anoth­er 20 min­utes, then stood at the cen­ter of a cir­cle as pas­tors laid their hands on him and the whole audi­ence – a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white group with about 20 black pas­tors – bowed heads to pray for him.

Then there was this tid­bit, which is even more inter­est­ing now that David Corn has drawn atten­tion to a cer­tain rev­erend close to the junior sen­a­tor from Texas:

Cruz, who told The Des Moines Reg­is­ter he has nev­er been to Iowa before, laid out his social con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials in some detail, explain­ing all the reli­gious issues he defend­ed in court cas­es he worked on as a pri­vate lawyer and as solic­i­tor gen­er­al in Texas. He intro­duced his Cuban immi­grant father, Rafael Cruz, who sat in the audi­ence.

That was then. This is now, today, per Andrew Shain of The State:

Repub­li­can U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is reach­ing out Mon­day to the same audi­ence of South Car­oli­na pas­tors that for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich vis­it­ed twice before his sur­prise vic­to­ry in the state’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Cruz, an expect­ed White House hope­ful who was the light­ning rod dur­ing last month’s 16-day par­tial fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down, will speak at a Colum­bia hotel. It is one of many events that evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane has orga­nized in key bat­tle­ground states since 2005.

Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is financed by the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates on social issues. Lane’s goal is to get more evan­gel­i­cals to the polls via the “pas­tors’ pol­i­cy brief­in­gs’’ that he has held over the years, includ­ing a half-dozen in South Car­oli­na.

...

I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

———-

“Wacko Birds of a Feath­er” by Ed Kil­go­re; Wash­ing­ton Month­ly; 11/04/2013

“Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz”

Look who stole the show at the ‘first’ Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event of the 2014 elec­tion cycle, back in July of 2013 in Iowa. And then, in Novem­ber of that year, he attend­ed anoth­er such event, this time South Car­oli­na. That’s part of the con­text of all these reports we were get­ting 2015 and 2016 about how Cruz was rely­ing on Lane’s net­work to secure his pri­ma­ry vic­to­ry and go on to win the White House: Ted Cruz has appar­ent­ly been attend­ed a large num­ber David Lane’s events.

And note when we see the ref­er­ence to Dr. Lau­rence White deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech at a 2012 Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event, recall how White and his wife were two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. In oth­er words, White is an Amer­i­can Renew­al Project mega-donor. He could pre­sum­ably give as many blood-cur­dling speech­es at he want­ed at these kinds of events:

...
I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.
...

Final­ly, let’s take a look at the fol­low­ing March 2015 Wash­ing­ton Post piece explor­ing these claims we’ve heard from Lane about how only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Note the piece is by Philip Bump, who , as we saw in the above Wash­ing­ton Times piece, was active­ly mock­ing Ted Cruz’s strat­e­gy at the time of rely­ing pret­ty much exclu­sive­ly on gen­er­at­ing turnout from non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals to secure his path to the White House. Mock­ery based, pre­sum­ably in part, on the fol­low­ing analy­sis exam­in­ing just how accu­rate this ’25% of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers actu­al­ly vote’ claim real­ly is. Sur­prise! It’s not a very accu­rate claim:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.

In a speech at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in Lynch­burg, Va., Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) out­lined his vision for the U.S. and announced his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent. Here’s the full speech. (Video: AP)

By Philip Bump
March 23, 2015 at 1:39 p.m. EDT

“Today,” Ted Cruz said dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial announce­ment Mon­day, “rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home.” Con­tin­u­ing his cen­tral theme — imag­ine! — Cruz offered an alter­na­tive: “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Get­ting votes from con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers is crit­i­cal to Cruz’s chances of win­ning the nom­i­na­tion, as we’ve not­ed. And it’s always the case that get­ting out more of your base is crit­i­cal to suc­cess. But is it true that half of born-again Chris­tians don’t vote?

...

After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!

That’s pret­ty clear­ly not true. A sur­vey from Pew Research puts the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion of U.S. adults that is evan­gel­i­cal at 26.3 per­cent. (This may be high, as is argued here.) The Cen­sus Bureau tracks reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing over time, allow­ing us to see what the num­bers would look like if Huck­abee were cor­rect.

Turnout accord­ing to Mike Huck­abee

Year Adult U.S. pop­u­la­tion Total vot­ers Evan­gel­i­cal adults (per Pew) Reg­is­tered evang. Vot­ed evang. Per­cent of all vot­ers
2008 225.5 mil­lion 131.2 mil­lion 59.3 mil­lion 29.7 mil­lion 14.8 mil­lion 11.3 per­cent
2010 230 mil­lion 96 mil­lion 60.4 mil­lion 30.2 mil­lion 7.5 mil­lion 7.9 per­cent
2012 235.2 mil­lion 132.9 mil­lion 61.9 mil­lion 30.9 mil­lion 15.5 mil­lion 11.6 per­cent

Before we get any fur­ther, notice the over­all turnout rates in 2008 through 2012, accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau: 58.2 per­cent, 41.8 per­cent, 56.5 per­cent. Turnout of 50 per­cent, then, isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al, depend­ing on the elec­tion.

But we can eval­u­ate Huck­abee’s claim against exit polling. Since 2004, 25 per­cent of the elec­torate has iden­ti­fied itself as evan­gel­i­cal in exit polling, vot­ing heav­i­ly for Repub­li­cans. In 2008, the fig­ure was 26 per­cent; in 2010, 25; in 2012, 26 again. That’s much high­er than Huck­abee’s esti­mates, and it’s pret­ty con­sis­tent.

You might notice that it’s also about in line with the Pew find­ings that 26 per­cent of the coun­try is evan­gel­i­cal. That’s a dif­fer­ent thing than say­ing that a cer­tain per­cent­age of the evan­gel­i­cal pop­u­la­tion came out to vote, but it does mean that turnout is about where you’d expect.

Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.

———–

“Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.” By Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/23/2015

“The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!”

As Bump points out, Mike Huck­abee was mak­ing the same claim we heard from David Lane: only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial race. And yet, as Bump’s team found, evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers appear to vote rough­ly in line with oth­er demographics...something around half vote, like every­one else in the US:

...
After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

...

Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.
...

Again, it’s not real­ly a sur­prise to find the claims of a vast evan­gel­i­cal under-vot­ing cri­sis are basi­cal­ly a fab­ri­ca­tion. It’s a very con­ve­nient fab­ri­ca­tion for fig­ures like Mike Huck­abee or David Lane. Or Rafael and Ted Cruz. Fig­ures who have built entire careers cen­tered around ener­giz­ing this vot­ing demo­graph­ic. Just as it’s not sur­pris­ing to find that a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is pred­i­cat­ed on pla­cat­ing this same demo­graph­ic. The path to the White House for Repub­li­cans has long been on the backs of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and that remains the case today.

But it’s not just that Trump is rely­ing on this same evan­gel­i­cal-heavy mod­el for vic­to­ry that Repub­li­cans have long pred­i­cat­ed their White House bids on. Trump’s ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ pol­i­tics — and his demon­strat­ed will­ing­ness to cater to the domin­ion­ist crowd when it comes to Supreme Court jus­tices — real­ly has ampli­fied the domin­ion­ist move­ment in large part because it’s so com­pat­i­ble with it. ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ is music to the ears of those argu­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians should force­ful­ly seize the reigns of gov­ern­ment and use that gov­ern­ment pow­er to active­ly impose ‘god­ly’ poli­cies. As the fol­low­ing August 2022 NBC report describes, that was the sen­ti­ment dri­ving many of the groups push­ing for the domin­ion­ist cap­ture of local school boards across Texas that year. A wild­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture, as we’ve seen. Recall how the South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ism — was push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump.

And as we also saw with those South­lake school board efforts, anoth­er group assist­ing in that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny that spends a por­tion of its funds on con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal caus­es. Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es for Patri­ot Mobile’s employ­ees dur­ing this peri­od. Note that Patri­ot Mobile’s co-founder and CFO, Glenn P. Sto­ry, shows up on the CNP mem­bers list.

So let’s take a clos­er look at Rafael Cruz’s Bible study teach­ings to the Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees dur­ing this joint cap­ture of the local Texas school boards. As we’ll see, the lessons were effec­tive­ly that there should be an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church in state. Instead, it should be a “one-way wall”, where church­es are allowed to direct­ly inter­fere with the state but not the oth­er way around.

And as the arti­cle also points out, there’s anoth­er we’ve seen before that was direct­ly involved in the school board cap­ture. The group asked its fol­low­ers to show up to pub­lic hear­ings and loud­ly sup­port the array of new pro­pos­als that soon inun­dat­ed the school boards this move­ment took over. The group hap­pens to be the True Texas Project. As we’ve seen, this is one of those groups in the direct orbit of Texas bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn where domin­ion­ism and overt Nazis min­gle. One of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more. Nazis and Domin­ion­ists. And Rafael Cruz. Amped up more than ever on domin­ion­ism thanks to Don­ald Trump:

NBC News

How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards

Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider.” Now the Trump-aligned com­pa­ny is on a mis­sion to win con­trol of Texas school boards.

Aug. 25, 2022, 7:00 AM CDT
By Mike Hix­en­baugh

DALLAS — A lit­tle more than a year after for­mer Trump advis­er Steve Ban­non declared that con­ser­v­a­tives need­ed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry-fueled TV pro­gram to spot­light Patri­ot Mobile, a Texas-based cell­phone com­pa­ny that had answered his call to action.

“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Ban­non said dur­ing an inter­view with Patri­ot Mobile’s pres­i­dent, Glenn Sto­ry, from the floor of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, or CPAC, in Dal­las on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

Sto­ry turned to the cam­era and said, “We went out and found 11 can­di­dates last cycle and we sup­port­ed them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Ban­non shout­ed as a crowd of CPAC atten­dees erupt­ed in applause.

It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

The Keller Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict made nation­al head­lines this month after the school board passed a new pol­i­cy that led the dis­trict to abrupt­ly pull more than 40 pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged library books off shelves for fur­ther review, includ­ing a graph­ic adap­ta­tion of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as sev­er­al LGBTQ-themed nov­els.

In the neigh­bor­ing city of South­lake, Patri­ot Mobile donat­ed framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Car­roll Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict dur­ing a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the dis­trict is now required to dis­play the posters promi­nent­ly in each of its school build­ings. After­ward, Patri­ot Mobile cel­e­brat­ed the dona­tion in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”

And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville Inde­pen­dent School District’s board of trustees vot­ed 4–3 to imple­ment a far-reach­ing set of poli­cies that restrict how teach­ers can dis­cuss race and gen­der. The new poli­cies also lim­it the rights of trans­gen­der and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents to use bath­rooms and pro­nouns that cor­re­spond with their gen­ders. And the board made it eas­i­er for par­ents to ban library books deal­ing with sex­u­al­i­ty.

...

Patri­ot Mobile offi­cials didn’t respond to mes­sages request­ing com­ment. Leigh Wamb­s­ganss, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Patri­ot Mobile Action and vice pres­i­dent of gov­ern­ment and media affairs at Patri­ot Mobile, declined to speak with a reporter at CPAC, say­ing she did not trust NBC News to accu­rate­ly report on the company’s polit­i­cal activism. In a social media post days lat­er, she called the journalist’s inter­view request harass­ment, adding, “I don’t inter­view with reporters I don’t trust.”

In recent inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said that Patri­ot Mobile’s goal is to install school board mem­bers who will oppose the teach­ing of “LGBTQ ide­olo­gies,” fight to remove “porno­graph­ic books,” and stand against school anti-racism ini­tia­tives, which she and her sup­port­ers have argued indoc­tri­nate chil­dren with anti-white and anti-Amer­i­can views.

“You know, the sad thing is there is real racism, and that is real­ly a ter­ri­ble thing,” Wamb­s­ganss said in a June appear­ance on the Mark Davis Show, a con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio pro­gram that broad­casts in the Dal­las region. “But they’re water­ing down and devalu­ing that word so bad that it’s become mean­ing­less.”

In that same inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss made clear that Patri­ot Mobile views its polit­i­cal activism as a reli­gious call­ing — and that the group’s elec­toral suc­cess this spring was just the begin­ning.

“We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.”

‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again’

Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

“You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.

Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

“If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”

...

Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

“This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

‘Sav­ing our pub­lic schools’

Patri­ot Mobile’s uncon­ven­tion­al busi­ness strat­e­gy appears to be pay­ing off.

With­out pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic num­bers, the com­pa­ny said it dou­bled its sub­scriber base in 2021, and as a result, it planned to give more than $1.5 mil­lion to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es in 2022, triple the amount from the year pri­or.

In Jan­u­ary, the com­pa­ny filed doc­u­ments to estab­lish Patri­ot Mobile Action and brought on Wamb­s­ganss to lead it — a strong sig­nal that the com­pa­ny was plan­ning to get involved in school board pol­i­tics.

Wamb­s­ganss, a long-time polit­i­cal activist, had earned nation­al acclaim among con­ser­v­a­tives in 2021 for her work as one of the co-founders of South­lake Fam­i­lies PAC, anoth­er group that pro­motes itself as “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly root­ed in Judeo-Chris­t­ian val­ues.” When the Car­roll school sys­tem in South­lake unveiled a diver­si­ty plan to crack down on racism and anti-LGBTQ bul­ly­ing in the major­i­ty white school dis­trict, South­lake Fam­i­lies, under Wamb­s­ganss’ lead­er­ship, raised hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to sup­port a slate of school board can­di­dates who promised to kill the plan.

After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

At the helm of the new­ly estab­lished Patri­ot Mobile Action, Wamb­s­ganss got to work achiev­ing that goal this spring, start­ing first with some sub­ur­ban school sys­tems close to home.

In inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said she and her team zeroed in on four North Texas inde­pen­dent school dis­tricts — Keller, Grapevine-Col­leyville, Mans­field and Car­roll — that had imple­ment­ed or con­sid­ered poli­cies deal­ing with race, sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der that she and oth­er Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives found objec­tion­able.

After inter­view­ing can­di­dates in each dis­trict, Patri­ot Mobile Action set­tled on a slate of 11 who pledged to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Fol­low­ing the play­book from South­lake, the PAC hired a pair of heavy-hit­ter GOP con­sult­ing firms that had worked on cam­paigns for Ted Cruz and Vir­ginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — bring­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nation­al-lev­el polit­i­cal strate­gies to local school board races.

Patri­ot Mobile paid Van­guard Field Strate­gies near­ly $150,000 to run get-out-the-vote can­vass­ing oper­a­tions across the four school dis­tricts, accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sures. The PAC paid anoth­er $240,000 to Axiom Strate­gies to pro­duce and send tens of thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers to homes across North Texas.

One fly­er sent to Mans­field res­i­dents base­less­ly blamed a recent class­room shoot­ing at a local high school on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry-inspired dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies and accused the dis­trict of putting “woke” pol­i­tics ahead of the safe­ty of chil­dren.

A Patri­ot Mobile mail­er sent in Grapevine and Col­leyville endorsed two board can­di­dates who the PAC said would oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, an aca­d­e­m­ic study of sys­temic racism that, accord­ing to the fly­er, “vio­lates every­thing patri­ots believe in.”

...

At CPAC in August, Ban­non asked Wamb­s­ganss and Sto­ry on his “War Room” TV show whether they had start­ed to see changes in the four school dis­tricts.

“Oh, tremen­dous,” Wamb­s­ganss said. “Those 11 seats in four ISDs means that now North Texas has over 100,000 stu­dents who, before May, had left­ist lead­er­ship. Now they have con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship.”

Ban­non replied, “Amen.”

‘This is not love’

On Mon­day night, North Texas res­i­dents got a front-row seat for what it looks like when Patri­ot Mobile takes over a school board.

Just 72-hours before the meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville school dis­trict had unveiled a sweep­ing 36-page pol­i­cy touch­ing on vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of the cul­ture wars over race, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty that have dom­i­nat­ed school pol­i­tics since last year.

Under the pol­i­cy, teach­ers are pro­hib­it­ed from dis­cussing any con­cepts relat­ed to or inspired by crit­i­cal race the­o­ry or what the pol­i­cy refers to as “sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion ide­olo­gies.” The pol­i­cy gives school employ­ees the right to refer to trans and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents by pro­nouns and names match­ing the ones they were assigned at birth — a prac­tice known as mis­gen­der­ing or dead­nam­ing — even if the student’s par­ents sup­port their child’s gen­der expres­sion. And the pol­i­cy pro­hibits any read­ing mate­ri­als and class­room dis­cus­sions deal­ing with “gen­der flu­id­i­ty,” which the doc­u­ment defines as any belief that “espous­es the view that bio­log­i­cal sex is mere­ly a social con­struct.”

Tam­my Naka­mu­ra, one of the board mem­bers backed by Patri­ot Mobile, said the board’s 4–3 vote to adopt the pol­i­cy ful­filled her cam­paign promise “to put an end to adults push­ing their world­views, whims and fan­tasies onto unsus­pect­ing chil­dren.”

Although some mem­bers of the board major­i­ty and their sup­port­ers argued that the pol­i­cy mere­ly brought the dis­trict in line with state and fed­er­al laws, Kate Hud­dle­ston, a staff attor­ney with the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Texas, said the plan goes well beyond the state’s anti-CRT law and appears to be in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights statutes that pro­tect stu­dents from dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of their gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty.

“This is the most extreme board pol­i­cy that we have seen relat­ed to class­room cen­sor­ship,” Hud­dle­ston said.

Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

“And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

“Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

Lat­er, a mom told the board she sup­port­ed ban­ning class­room dis­cus­sions of “gen­der flu­id­i­ty” because, she said, when her child start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing as a girl, Grapevine-Col­leyville teach­ers pro­vid­ed the stu­dent with infor­ma­tion affirm­ing that gen­der expres­sion. As a result, the moth­er said, chok­ing up as a beep­er sig­naled that her time had expired, “I lost my son.”

Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”

...

———-

“How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards” By Mike Hix­en­baugh; NBC News; 08/25/2022

““We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.””

Patri­ot Mobile isn’t here to please the pub­lic. They are here to please God. Start­ing with get­ting domin­ion­ists elect­ed to school boards. It start­ed in Texas but they have nation ambi­tions. It’s not to see why. They won every race by a land­slide. The mod­el works fan­tas­ti­cal­ly. At least fan­tas­ti­cal­ly in these 2022 tri­al runs:

...
It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

...

Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

“This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

...

After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”
...

But as we’ve seen, they haven’t been win­ning these school board races on their own. First, as we’ve seen, the 2022 South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ism — was push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. Patri­ot Mobile Action was just one of the many CNP-con­nect­ed groups focused on Texas school boards in 2022.

And then there’s the True Texas Project, one of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more:

...
Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

“And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

“Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

...

Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”
...

And last, but cer­tain­ly not least, in the long list of Domin­ion­ist groups work­ing on those 2022 school board races we find Rafael Cruz, who began hold­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees where he advo­cat­ed for an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state while implor­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to run for office:

...
Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

“If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”
...

And as the arti­cle describes, while Patri­ot Mobile was found­ed in 2012 and polit­i­cal­ly active from the begin­ning, it was only after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in 2016 that the group began open­ly embrac­ing Domin­ion­ist stances. At the same time it became rapid­ly pro-Trump. “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” was domin­ion­ist code. At least to the domin­ion­ists:

...
Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

“You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.
...

Trump tur­bo-charged Amer­i­can domin­ion­ism. It’s one of the most under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed and like­ly con­se­quen­tial aspects of the whole Trump ‘expe­ri­ence’ for the Unit­ed States. Of course, it was­n’t just Trump’s pres­i­den­cy that tur­bo charged this agen­da. His ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive has been instru­men­tal in shift­ing the dis­cus­sion from how to win the next elec­tion to how to seize pow­er per­ma­nent­ly. A ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’, as Kevin Roberts infa­mous­ly put it. The move­ment is ready to drop the pre­tense of democ­ra­cy, and just might get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­firm that, should Trump win or lose. Don’t for­get, the insur­rec­tion was a CNP project too. You can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the mad­ness of the Trump years from the CNP. Which is why any attempts to sep­a­rate Trump from the CNP’s Project 2025 is noth­ing more than sil­ly the­atrics. Along with any attempts to seri­ous­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate the kind of poli­cies we’d get get a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy from what we could expect from Ted Cruz’s first term. The one Rafael has been plan­ning for Ted’s whole life. Same diff. On one lev­el, Trump is a wild phe­nom­e­na that cap­ture the Repub­li­can Par­ty and is per­ma­nent­ly shap­ing it in his image. But from the per­spec­tive of the CNP’s long-stand­ing agen­da that Rafael has been work­ing on for decades, Trump just Ted with the fas­cist charis­ma nec­es­sary to pull it off. They hope.

It’s also all a reminder that, should Trump lose and not man­age to drag what’s left of US democ­ra­cy down with him in the process and there’s still elec­tions in the future, the ‘post-Trump’ GOP sort of has default leader. Ted Cruz. The same guy who was prob­a­bly going to win the nom­i­na­tion through an evan­gel­i­cal-focused pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy in 2016 before Trump came along. Which means we should prob­a­bly brace our­selves for the new and improved Trumpian ‘charis­mat­ic’ MAGA Ted, ready and eager to claim Trump’s man­tle. It can always get worse. Ted Cruz worse, in this case.