LADY LAKE, Fla. — Ralph Reed turns 50 this month, but as he roused a crowd of retirees here with talk of restoring Christian values and bringing down President Obama, he still looked like the boy wonder who appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1995, named “The Right Hand of God” for building the Christian Coalition into an electoral juggernaut.
Ralph Reed talked up his new group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, to a Tea Party audience in Florida.
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Mr. Reed was once tapped by Pat Robertson for the Christian Coalition.
The standing ovation the other day at a meeting of the Tri-County Tea Party in central Florida was just one sign that Mr. Reed, who has formed a new group with national aspirations called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is escaping the political purgatory that even many Republicans had predicted and may be gaining some traction as he seeks to emerge as a player in the 2012 campaign.
In 2006, in his first bid for elective office, Mr. Reed suffered a humiliating loss in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia, dogged by embarrassing revelations about his close business ties to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who went to prison for influence peddling and defrauding Indian tribes.
But the ensuing five years have been a political eternity, with the election of Mr. Obama, the rise of the Tea Party and last year’s conservative victories that have whetted Republican appetites for more. In that time the public-relations savvy Mr. Reed, who once said a factor in his decision to locate his consulting firm in Atlanta was that the city was the headquarters of CNN, has kept an unusually low profile.
Hardly bashful these days, Mr. Reed suggests that his party needs him. He said that “a couple good friends, fairly senior in the party” told him, “You need to do something.” They said, “Since you left the Christian Coalition, we haven’t had a lean, mean operation focused on the grass roots.”
Mr. Reed is pursuing these grand, some say grandiose, plans with a nonprofit group that he has described as “a 21st-century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids.” As the name implies, the Faith and Freedom Coalition hopes to rope in a broader constituency. His “sweet spot,” he says, is the millions of people who were fired up by the fiscal concerns of the Tea Party and share the cultural values of evangelicals.
“That’s our market,” he added.
The coalition’s red, white and blue logo is reminiscent of the Christian Coalition’s. The new group is holding its second annual conference in Washington on Friday and Saturday, conjuring memories of the “Road to Victory” events that the Christian Coalition held in the capital every year.
As with the Christian Coalition, this group’s conference roster includes nearly all the likely contenders for the presidential nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Herman Cain, a retired businessman, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, as well as a famous almost-candidate, Donald Trump. There will also be evangelical leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and establishment Republicans like Speaker John A. Boehner and Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.
“Ralph is rebuilding his image,” said Matt Towery, a columnist and pollster in Atlanta who formerly managed Newt Gingrich’s Congressional campaigns. “How powerful will he be? We have no way of knowing, but he’s very clever and has the talent and connections to reinvent himself.”
Many of the retirees gathered here could not even recall who Ralph Reed was, let alone ponder his past. But they loved his message. Weaving together themes of the Tea Party and evangelical Christians, he called the debt crisis a sign that the country has lost sight of its founding moral principles. He said that by working together, fiscal and cultural conservatives can “begin the process of turning the country around.”
“Our goal for 2012 is to build a file of 29 million conservative voters,” he said, describing to cheers the political “ground game” he is best known for, now souped-up with Internet technologies. “We’ll e-mail them, we’ll call them, we’ll knock on their doors and, if necessary, we’ll drive them to the polls.”
No matter if his goals are realistic, Mr. Reed’s return is welcomed by many Republicans, said Phil Cox, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, because “Ralph has a great track record.” The Abramoff ties are “largely in the rear-view mirror,” Mr. Cox said.
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