POLITICAL AMAZON: CR Sugar-Daddies, Politics, and You

INTRODUCTION: As the GOP convention grinds on this week, Democrats and liberals are expressing their alarm at the extremist, religious-right bent of today's GOP.

Liberal pundits covering the convention and their guests--professional and "call-ins"-- bitterly deride the extremist nature of today's GOP and their beholding to the most extremist political, politicochristian, and corporate forces in America.

The warping process that produced today's extremist GOP did not happen overnight, and only part of it happened as a stealth movement. Much of it occurred right in plain site, documented largely in bits and pieces by the mainstream media, and exhaustively by well-respected, albeit less powerful and publicly known, political scientists.

However, for whatever reason, this "slouching-towards-Bethleham-to-be-born" direction of the GOP has been ignored by those who were in the position to have raised the alarm long before the GOP reached this crisis condition...much like Bush's systematic destruction of our country over the last 4 years has been ignored by those in Congress and America's mainstream media who were in the position to have raised the alarm long before we ended up with nearly 1000 American soldiers slaughtered at the Bush/Cheney Altar of Avarice and Greed in Iraq.

The GOP has undergone a convoluted morphing, and to try to grasp the intricacies of what has happened over the last 15 years is not going to be easy.

The politicians and pundits who have the power to bring this issue into the American public's consciousness are very busy folks these days, working 24/7 to deal with the continuing degradation of our country by president Bush and his supporters. They have little time to take on the responsibility of first learning about, and then talking about, the corporate-politicochristian process that has empowered Bush, and easily-bought politicians like him.

However, the initiation of the process MUST BE MADE RIGHT NOW, TODAY, if we are to have a ghost of a chance of taking back our country from the extremist rightwing.

We can no longer afford the luxury of passing up opportunities to expose the average American to the forces which have brought this destructive change to the GOP and America.

Extremist conservative power-brokers like Richard Viguerie were at the 2004 GOP Convention in NYCity, and Viguerie was actually interviewed by a liberal talk-show host. Yet, instead of using this opportunity to introduce listeners to the cause and process of the GOP change towards extremism, in which Viguerie plays a cornerstone role (he and Paul Weyrich were responsible for the creation of America's Unholy Trinity: politics-religion-corporate financing), Viguerie was given a free pass and Americans remained uninformed.

Did you know that during the GOP Convention in NYCity, the Council on National Policy --a very powerful, secretive group of rightwing financiers/ politicians/ religions nuts / corporate moguls-- met in NYCity?

That's right. Right under the noses of the Democratic Party politicians and liberal pundits bemoaning what was happening to the GOP and how they were destroying America, one of the groups responsible for this was meeting right under their noses--and not one of the politicians or pundits outed this meeting!

The takeover of the GOP by the extremist religious right started at least two decades ago. However, it was about 15 years ago that the serious funding of this effort began in California. First the local government positions were targeted; then county; then statewide and, before we knew it, the most extremist religious-right forces had taken over the California State Republican Party Platform.

The process was so successful that the method used has been instituted in other states.

It certainly was no big secret that this had occurred, and that it was spreading to other states. Those of us who had witnessed the process in California spent an absurd amount of effort--with practically zero results-- contacting politicians, the media, pundits, authors--anybody who might use their weight to get this issue before the American public before it was too late.

Finally, in 1996 (that's 6 years ago, when there was still ample time to start throwing up roadblocks to the movement), Mother Jones wrote "God's Vice Regents," which is about the most easily read article on this religious-right takeover.

There are dozens of well-researched websites, and several pristinely researched books, that deal with this extremist politicochristian movement.

Yet here we are, watching our country being destroyed by the political party and the president that this extremist politicochristian movement worked so hard to put into power.

Yet because our Democratic Party politicians and our liberal pundits--who had the power to bring this to light yet refused to do so--ignored this powerful extremist politicochristian movement, our country is tottering on the brink of being made into a Christian theocracy.

The Republican Party Platform in California has undergone significant changes over the last decade, thanks largely to gazillionaire (and Home Savings and Loan heir) Howard Ahmanson, Jr.

If you take the time to read up on one issue this year, this will be the most important one you could choose.

The articles on this webpage discuss the extremist religious-right's funding of America's rightwing politicians, focusing on California's Republican Party.

Although some of the articles focus on California, the information is vital to every American because the extremist religious right were so successful in California that they have taken their "program" of GOP State Party Platform takeover to other states--and one of them might be the one you live in.

The objective of this takeover is to rewrite our government laws (according to Old Testament/ Mosaic Law) to control every aspect of our life, including education, law, art, education, politics, and private moral issues.

These extremist Christians (Christian Reconstructionists and other fundamentalist nightmares) by stealth, took over the Republican Party platform in California, changing it to suit their extremist views; one of the changes they made is that now in California to receive funding and acknowledgement from the GOP, the candidate must not only oppose abortion rights but have nearly a life-long history of zealous adherence to this principle.

They have been BIG players in California for well over a decade, including in the recall of Governor Davis and backing selected candidates for his replacement.

You simply have to read the information to understand the enormity of both their impact on government controls on citizen morality AND the huge numbers of powerful Republican politicians who now do their bidding.

Although Christian Reconstructionist buying of rightwing politicians in America is a long-entrenched problem, there has been practically zero attention paid to it by America's mainstream media.

However, thanks largely to the internet, more Americans are becoming aware of the threat that Christian Reconstructionists pose to our nation and apparently even Republican constituents are protesting their buying of GOP politicians.

Indeed, lately the #1 extremist GOP funder in California, Howard Ahmanson Jr (Home S&L gazillionaire), and his wife have had some of their contributions returned by Republican politicians, and the Ahmansons are upset at being known for the policies they represent.

The Ahmansons have, in the past, been ultrasecretive about themselves, their donations and their politics. However, because of their donations now taking on the stench of extremist religious politics, they decided to now "go public" to try to spin the public's view of their actions.

As a vehicle they used the Orange County Register articles (text below) , which published a six-part series about the Ahmansons.

I am posting these articles on this webpage to ensure this information becomes more widely known.

In addition, I am posting the Mother Jones article from a few years ago which gives a more concise review of the Christian Reconstructionists' stealth activities --and success--in California.

The Orange County Register's suite of articles is extensive. However, once you read the Mother Jones article you will understand why it is so important that you set aside the time necessary to read the information, and take action to inform others.

The other articles on this page are a sampling of the information available about this issue, and include Ahmanson's funding of the Bush campaign, the Council on National Policy's links to Ahmanson's efforts, the extremist backers of this effort (some of whom believe gays should be executed and victims of AIDS be locked up in concentration camps), and the possibility that in 2006 California's Lt. Governor will be a hand-picked Ahmanson politician.

MotherJones.com / News / Feature

God's Vice-Regents
The religious right has conquered the Republican Party in California--now they're bringing the same game plan to your state.

Suzanne Herel
January 20 , 1998

A faction of right-wing Republicans who believe in governing by the Bible has already taken control of the California Republican Party. Now they're poised to duplicate that feat in 35 other states—and counting—under the banner of the new National Federation of Republican Assemblies. Their immediate goal: to cultivate a Reaganesque candidate who can win the presidency in 2000. Their long-term goal: an America ruled by the word of God.

The story begins a decade ago. Frustrated by the failure of Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, some of his followers in Sacramento hatched a plan to take over the California Republican Party. First they packed the then-moderate California Republican Assembly (CRA), a mainstream caucus with a heavy hand in the state party's nominating process, with their Bible-minded colleagues. By 1990 they controlled the CRA, and since then the CRA's clout has helped the religious conservatives nominate and elect local candidates and—crucially—catapult true believers into state party leadership slots.

Ten years of dedication and planning later, the operation is a stunning success. Members of the Bible-waving CRA—which now bills itself as the "conservative conscience" of the state GOP—hold the top 13 elected spots in the party leadership, from state chair on down to second assistant secretary. In addition to the top posts, CRA members now make up roughly two-thirds of the California Republican Party's 1,700 voting members. That means they decide whom to nominate in the primaries—and whom to smear using their considerable resources of influence and money. Today every statewide GOP candidate courts CRA for its endorsement, including Attorney General Dan Lungren, who has already "interviewed" with CRA for his gubernatorial bid next year.

Nationwide in '98
But California was just the beginning. Flush with their success, the leaders of the CRA have exported their model of state party infiltration nationwide. In 1993 they helped set up a sister Arizona Republican Assembly, and last August they founded the new National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) to help coordinate affiliate groups in every state. The NFRA boasts the blessing of such right-wing shakers as Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum and Bay Buchanan, sister of Pat, on its honorary advisory board, along with Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council and other conservative noteworthies.

Already 36 states have Republican Assemblies modeled on the CRA, and organizers expect conservative groups in the remaining 14 to organize their own affiliates by Easter. NFRA membership now stands at about 15,000, says NFRA president Stephen Frank, a former president of the CRA who advocates legislating by biblical principles.

"Give us another year and we'll triple that number," Frank says. "The important part here is that we have the ability not to sit at the table but to own the table. Who cares if you can eat if you can't set the menu? We want to set the menu." He adds, "We are the masters of government, not servants."

Says Frank: "Our goal is to organize grassroots support to win primaries for Constitutional conservatives, and elections for principled Republicans."

The NFRA's first move was to establish communication among religious-right groups. "What we have found is that there are conservative coffee clubs throughout other states, but each one in a community didn't realize there were others. We're creating a community of conservatives," Frank explains.

The NFRA plans an early August conference in Dallas, where it expects visits from likely GOP presidential contenders. Next year, it'll hold its first full-fledged national convention and endorse a candidate for president. Its motto: "United in '98; Victory in 2000."

As NFRA chief Frank criss-crosses the country recruiting new assembly affiliates, his travel and accomodations are paid for by the CRA's 2-year-old PAC, the Republican Victory Fund, which pumped nearly $70,000 into the campaigns of CRA-endorsed candidates in 1996. To keep the coffers filled, Frank urges members to sign up for Amerivision LifeLine phone service, a Working Assets-type service which donates 10 percent of a member's bill to conservative causes such as the Republican Victory Fund, Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, and more than 500 anti-abortion groups including Operation Rescue's ex-chief Randall Terry and various Right-to-Life chapters. Believers are also urged to use the Republican Victory Fund Visa card, which similarly kicks back a donation for each bill.

The NFRA game plan is grassroots politicking, CRA style: "We need to win council seats, school boards, statehouse races, assembly races, and Congress, and the cumulative will be winning the presidency," Frank says. "We're doing it the old-fashioned way: community by community."

Such cocksure talk might be easily dismissed if it weren't for CRA's proven success with just such a method in California. Dominating the GOP nomination process, CRA has racked up dozens of big primary victories, including that of U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) in 1992, and last week's special election primary victory of CRA member Tom Bordonaro for U.S. Congress over liberal Republican Brooks Firestone. CRA also claims credit for the winning ballot initiatives Prop. 187, which denied benefits to illegal immigrants, and Prop. 209, which dismantled affirmative action; and CRA now champions the English for Children initiative, which would end bilingual education, and the Payroll Protection for Unionized Workers initiative, which would abolish the automatic payroll checkoff for union dues.

Plan Ahead
From radical fringe to kingmakers in a decade — how did they do it? "Basically, there's two places you have influence: one is in the nominating process in the primaries, where you can elect people in ideological agreement with your views, and the other is in the party structure," says former CRA vice president John Stoos, a former gun lobbyist, member of the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, and senior consultant to the State Assembly. "And who pays attention to this stuff? You literally have to plan months and years ahead to know where the openings are."

That's just what CRA did, patiently building their base below the political radar. Beginning in the early 1990s, they filled school boards, city councils, and Republican Party county central committees with like-minded religious, anti-abortion colleagues. Under the bylaws of the state party, these elected officials—and even nominees who lose in the general election—are allowed to appoint voting members of the state party.

The party entity called the county central committee was key to the CRA's technique, says Bob Larkin, a Simi Valley Republican who has battled the CRA conservatives for years. Before 1990, he says, it was hard to find people interested in running for these lowly local committee seats. Then conservative Republicans stepped in and filled them with their people. Seven years later, the CRA swept the party elections of February 1997, winning every elected seat on the state party board.

Larkin felt the wrath of the CRA when he ran for the California Assembly in 1996. In 1992 he had angered the CRA by launching a campaign to wrest control of the party's Ventura County Central Committee away from the conservatives. In reprisal, the CRA backed conservative Tom McClintock, who defeated Larkin in the 1996 primary and ultimately won the general election.

"They're organized and dedicated," says Larkin, "and mainstream Republicans are neither, so a very small group can take over."

To counter the conservative juggernaut, Larkin last fall formed the California Coalition of Responsible Republicans, a conference of moderate groups working to "restore some sanity to the California Republican Party."

God's Vice-Regents
While the CRA controls the state GOP, they don't yet control the statehouse. On the CRA's immediate agenda is putting a lock on the majority of the California State Assembly's 80 seats up for election this year. By a slight margin, Democrats won control in 1996. Republicans have a good shot at taking the Assembly back in the 1998 elections, and Stoos says the CRA has already identified 34 target seats for conservative Republicans.

What would CRA control mean for California?

The CRA's principles support the right to bear arms, strict interpretation of the Constitution, limited government, and "fair" trade and sovereignty. They condemn the separation of church and state, abortion, affirmative action, women in combat, and homosexuality. And members—even Frank, who is Jewish—advocate legislating by the Bible.

"Legislation should be biblical principles put into action," Frank says. Asked about the differing versions of the Bible used by various religions, he contended that every religion—even Buddhism—espouses a set of principles similar to the Ten Commandments.

Stoos, in an article for the Chalcedon Report, a journal of the radical Christian Reconstructionist movement, goes so far as to call Christian politicians God's "vice-regents...those who believe in the Lordship of Christ and the dominion mandate."

The "dominion mandate," Stoos told the MoJo Wire, "is that individuals are impacted by salvation. You will want to obey God's commandments, and to the extent you do that, you start being a better person. ...If there are enough of these groups in a community, the community is different. If government has a rule of law that is biblical justice, you will have freedom and liberty."

As proof of his theory, he points to the repeal in the 1970s of laws prohibiting homosexual sex acts—biblical offenses. "The proof is in the pudding," said Stoos. "Since we lifted those laws, we've had the biggest epidemic in history."

Chapter and Verse
Now the CRA's fundamentalist beliefs and savvy grassroots politics are putting on a serious road show.

One of the first states to buy in to the CRA model was Utah. Utah Republican Assembly president and co-founder Don Ruzicka, a Salt Lake area businessman, got interested after he and his wife Gayle, state president of the Eagle Forum, were talking with Schlafly.

Chartered in 1997, URA already has started making known its dissatisfaction with certain Republican lawmakers. "We have the grassroots strength to influence elections, and we are going to control as much of the process as we can and steer the party back to its roots," Ruzicka says.

In Pennsylvania, the conservative group Mainstream Republicans chartered the Pennsylvania Republican Assembly as its grassroots wing last August. Mainstream Republicans, an unofficial caucus of state committees, helped convince the party in 1994 to endorse staunch abortion opponent Rick Santorum, who beat out popular U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford.

Thanks to this pedigree, the PRA already has a strong showing in the state party. "We have the wherewithal on a real important vote to mobilize 50 percent of the state committee," says PRA chairman Ted Meehan. "When we want it to go one way and the leadership wants it another way, it's darn close."

Meehan's group, like its California counterpart, has spent years identifying like-minded Republicans and convincing them to join political committees and run for office. "We held receptions and tried to find out who the pro-life conservative people were, and we started to form a network," he says. "After the first reception we had identified maybe 15 or so. Five years down the road we're at about 81, better than a quarter of the state committee, including eight county chairmen."

In Florida, the assembly idea will be popular because people are dissatisfied with both political parties, says Rob Ross, general counsel for the new Florida Republican Assembly, chartered last month. "This is the last straw for a lot of Republicans. If this doesn't work, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to leave the party."

A House Divided
Some Republican critics say it's the CRA and its fundamentalist cousins that are scaring voters away from the party. Bob Larkin points out that in California, for example, only 11 percent of new voters last year registered as Republican, compared to 26 percent Democrat and 50 percent independent. "They are converting us to a third party," he says.

GOP critics also take issue with the Republican Assemblies' practice of campaigning against Republicans who don't support a strict conservative platform. Utah's Ruzicka doesn't deny this: "We're not afraid to come out against a Republican who is a Republican in Democrat's clothing."

In New Jersey, for example, the Christian Coalition sent out more than 1 million fliers against the re-election of pro-choice Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, Larkin says. CRA president John Courtney then sent a memo to U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich citing Whitman's narrow victory as proof that moderate Republican candidates just don't win. "Where I come from," Larkin says, "we call that treason, and people who do that traitors."

Love them or loathe them, the CRA and its 35 counterparts in the NFRA have their finger on the money. In politics, perception is reality, says Ruzicka. "You can wield a considerable amount of power if people think you have the power and you exercise it in some effective way. If we can organize and mold the conservatives across the U.S. into an effective lobby—and I see no reason why we can't—then we will be a political force that the Republican Party will have to reckon with."

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This copyrighted information has been posted as an information source only.

Quirky millionaire Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on a mission from God to stop gay marriage, fight evolution, defeat "liberal" churches -- and reelect George W. Bush.

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By Max Blumenthal

Jan. 6, 2004 | In the summer of 2000, a group of frustrated Episcopalians from the board of the American Anglican Council gathered at a sun-soaked Bahamanian resort to blow off some steam and hatch a plot. They were fed up with the Episcopal Church and what they perceived as a liberal hierarchy that had led it astray from centuries of so-called orthodox Christian teaching. The only option, they believed, was to lead a schism.

But this would take money. After the meeting, Anglican Council vice president Bruce Chapman sent a private memo to the group's board detailing a plan to involve Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a Southern California millionaire, and his wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, in the plan. "Fundraising is a critical topic," Chapman wrote. "But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify." It was a logical pitch: As a key financier of the Christian right with a penchant for anti-gay campaigns, Ahmanson clearly shared the Anglican Council's interest in subverting the left-leaning church. Moreover, Ahmanson and his wife were close friends and prayer partners of David Anderson, the Anglican Council's chief executive, while Chapman and his political team were already enjoying hefty annual grants from Ahmanson to Chapman's think tank, the Discovery Institute.

Soon, the money came rolling in to the Anglican Council, with more than $1 million in donations from Ahmanson in 2000 and 2001. And the newly flush Anglican Council redoubled its anti-gay campaign, climaxing in November when the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson. With its war chest full and its strongest pretext yet for a schism, the group cranked up a smear campaign against Robinson, falsely accusing him of sexual harassment and administering a bisexual pornography Web site, prompting three wealthy dioceses to split with the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Council's renegade network. Now more dioceses and parishes are poised to follow, a prospect that threatens to weaken the progressive Episcopal Church's political influence -- 44 members of Congress are Episcopalian -- and provide an important new tableau for right-wing political organizing.

The Episcopal Church split is only a small part of Ahmanson's concerted efforts to radically transform not only American religion, but the nation's moral culture and, thereby, the country itself. His money has made possible some of the most pivotal conservative movements in America's recent history, including the 1994 GOP takeover of the California Legislature, a ban on gay marriage and affirmative action in California, and the mounting nationwide campaign to prove Darwin wrong about evolution. His financial influence also helped propel the recent campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. And besides contributing cash to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Ahmanson has played an important role in driving Bush's domestic agenda by financing the career of Marvin Olasky, a conservative intellectual whose ideas inspired the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
After more than 20 years of politically oriented philanthropy, Ahmanson is now emerging as one of the major financial angels of the right, putting him in the company of Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil and banking heir who bankrolled the groundwork for much of the conservative movement's apparatus and became a household name in the 1990s thanks to his $2.4 million dirty-tricks campaign against President Bill Clinton.

Yet few Americans have heard of Ahmanson -- and that's the way he likes it. Unlike Scaife, Ahmanson donates cash either out of his own pocket or through his unincorporated corporate entity, Fieldstead and Co., to avoid having to report the names of his grantees to the IRS. His Tourette's syndrome only adds to his reclusive persona, as his fear of speaking leads him to shun the media. And while Scaife travels the world in his own DC-7 jet, Ahmanson shuns luxury for a lifestyle of down-to-earth humility. As his wife of 17 years, Roberta Green Ahmanson, told me, he once gave up his seat on an airplane for a refund. And when he goes out for a spin in his neighborhood in Newport Beach, a posh coastal community 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, he drives a Prius, Toyota's new, environment-friendly hybrid car. It's a modest choice for a man who could afford an entire Hummer dealership, but nevertheless a considerable upgrade from his old Datsun pickup.

At the root of Ahmanson's quirky asceticism and ardent conservatism is his rocky path from cloistered rich kid to Bible-believing philanthropist. Ahmanson's father, Howard Sr., was a savings and loan tycoon whose net worth was valued at over $300 million at the time of his death in 1968. Howard Jr. was only 18 at the time he inherited the fortune. Ejected from his sheltered youth to confront a world suddenly in his palm, the reluctant heir feared that he would never surpass his father's accomplishments; at the same time, he viewed his inherited fortune as a wall separating him from humanity. After wandering the country and the world searching for peace of mind, he returned home in the mid-'70s still a lost soul.

It was then that he found his salvation in the church and in R.J. Rushdoony, a prolific author and an influential theologian of the far right. Rushdoony is the father of Christian Reconstructionism, a strange variant of Calvinism that stresses waging political struggle to put the earth, and in particular the U.S., under the control of biblical law. In his 30-some books, he advocated everything from the end of government-administered social welfare and public schools to the execution of homosexuals. For around 20 years, until Rushdoony's death in 1995, Ahmanson served on the board of his think tank, Chalcedon , granting it a total of $1 million. In exchange, Rushdoony acted as Ahmanson's spiritual advisor, imbuing him with a sense of order and a mission.

Today, Ahmanson says he is more mature than the card-carrying Reconstructionist who told the Orange County Register in 1985: "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives." In brief, written responses to questions I e-mailed to him, he placed special emphasis on his disagreement with Rushdoony's opinion that homosexuals should be executed. "Due to my association with Rushdoony, reporters have often assumed that I agree with him in all applications of the penalties of the Old Testament Law, particularly the stoning of homosexuals," Ahmanson wrote. "My vision for homosexuals is life, not death, not death by stoning or any other form of execution, not a long, lingering, painful death from AIDS, not a violent death by assault, and not a tragic death by suicide. My understanding of Christianity is that we are all broken, in need of healing and restoration. So far as I can tell, the only hope for our healing is through faith in Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection from the dead."

While Ahmanson was reluctant to speak, his wife clarified his views for me in a series of interviews that marked her first encounter with the press since 1992. In our talks, she recounted how she and her husband met in 1984, in their 30s, while she was covering religion and the San Bernardino square-dancing scene for the Orange County Register. As a dyed-in-the-wool Calvinist, raised Christian in Perryville, Iowa, schooled at Calvin College, and a teacher at what she called "experimental Christian" schools throughout Canada as a young woman, she made a perfect match for Ahmanson. Two years later they were married. With her media experience and extensive theological education to go with a warm, refreshingly humorous personality that constrasts starkly with her husband's insularity, Mrs. Ahmanson has enthusiastically taken on the role of his able spokesperson and indefatigable guardian.

Roberta Ahmanson made pains to highlight her husband's charitable side, stressing his donations to the Nature Conservancy, the evangelical humanitarian aid group World Vision, and the Orange County Rescue Mission, a Christian homeless shelter that President Bush recently singled out for funding under his faith-based initiative. For her, Ahmanson is a complicated yet balanced man whose political activism and charitable giving are driven by a higher force.

"His goal is -- this is going to sound crazy -- his goal is to do with his money what God wants him to do," she explained.

And why does God want him to give to so many right-wing causes?

"The Christian view of man is that we're not perfect. You don't give to things that base themselves on the optimistic view that human beings are going to be doing it right," Mrs. Ahmanson explained. When I asked if this meant she and her husband would still want to install the supremacy of biblical law, she replied: "I'm not suggesting we have an amendment to the Constitution that says we now follow all 613 of the case laws of the Old Testament ... But if by biblical law you mean the last seven of the 10 Commandments, you know, yeah."

Ahmanson's first major political success came in 1992, when he banded together with four right-wing businessmen to back the campaigns of anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-big business candidates to take over the California state Assembly. With $3 million funneled through seven pro-business, anti-abortion and Republican political action fronts, Ahmanson and company tipped the balance of the Legislature to the Republicans, capturing a startling 25 of the GOP's 39 seats for their candidates. Their push ushered two important movement cadres into power: Tom McClintock, a veteran activist and former director of economic and regulatory affairs of the Ahmanson-funded libertarian think tank Claremont Institute; and Ray Haynes, an unknown lawyer from another Ahmanson-funded group, the Western Center for Law and Justice, which once filed a brief defending a local school district for banning Gabriel Garcéa Marquéz's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Upon seizing power, McClintock sponsored a bill returning the death penalty to California, while Haynes led a failed 1995 attempt to ban state funding for abortion and numerous futile fights to block anti-hate crime and domestic partnership legislation. In 2003, the two Ahmanson cadres became instrumental figures in propelling the campaign to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. In March 2003, Haynes personally convinced a fellow arch-conservative, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, to bankroll the recall ballot qualification. After the recall qualified with the help of $1.7 million from Issa, McClintock entered the recall campaign, ultimately finishing third as the token cultural conservative. As in 1992, Ahmanson's camp provided the groundwork for McClintock's campaign: John Stoos, an avowed Reconstructionist associated with Chalcedon, served as his deputy campaign manager, and Ahmanson hosted some of the most prominent leaders in the Christian right for a fundraiser in Colorado in September that, according to the Los Angeles Times, raised $100,000 .

To complement his electoral efforts, Ahmanson has pumped enormous amounts of money into ballot measure committees, dramatically altering California's social landscape in the process. In 1999, Ahmanson helped to sharply restrict affirmative action in California with a $350,000 donation to Proposition 209; that same year he helped ban gay marriage with a donation of $210,000 -- 35 percent of all total funds -- to Proposition 22. To avoid giving voters the impression that Prop. 22 was somehow anti-gay, its "Protection of Marriage Committee" spent nearly half of Ahmanson's d

onation on billboards presenting the measure as "pro-family."
Despite his penchant for behind-the-scenes string-pulling, Ahmanson's anti-gay campaigns have attracted close scrutiny by Jerry Sloan, a Sacramento gay-rights advocate and founder of Project Tocsin .

"Ahmanson's financing of these various initiatives both statewide and locally and his financing of anti-gay legislators who fight tooth and toenail against any legislation that would protect people or enhance our rights as citizens has made the struggle for our rights probably two or three times harder than it should be," Sloan told me. "I can't think of anybody who's more dangerous to the average Californian than Howard Ahmanson."

With President Bush running for reelection cautiously signaling support for a constitutional amendment -- modeled after California's Prop. 22 -- to ban gay marriage, one of Ahmanson's key causes has gone national. And as donors to Bush's 2000 campaign, the Ahmansons couldn't be more pleased with the dividends of their investment. "We supported him the first time and we'll support him again," a doting Mrs. Ahmanson said of Bush.

Ahmanson's money has also sustained the operations of influential Washington insiders like Grover Norquist, an anti-tax lobbyist who once compared the federal income tax to date rape, as well as far-out groups like the Spiritual Counterfeits Project , an evangelical ministry entrenched in the shadows of Berkeley's People's Park working to undermine the local New Age scene, or what its monthly journal has called the "neo-pagans."

As an ardent anti-pornography activist, Ahmanson granted $160,000 in 1997 to the woman who helped bring down Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign, Donna Rice-Hughes, and her group Enough Is Enough , which this year successfully lobbied Congress to provide web filters in public libraries. "While I might advocate less liberty for vice, I recognize that all we can do in most cases is limit it somewhat and drive what remains underground rather than wipe it out," Ahmanson told me.

One of Ahmanson's most significant investments has been in the career of a man Mrs. Ahmanson describes as his "dear friend," Marvin Olasky, the most influential propagandist of the Christian right in the last decade. A former Jew turned Marxist who then converted to Rushdoony's Reconstructionism, Olasky spent most of the 1980s as an obscure journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin. His first book, "Turning Point: A Christian Worldview Declaration," was published by Ahmanson's privately held philanthropic entity, the Fieldstead Institute, and was co-authored by Fieldstead's director, Herbert Schlossberg. Though theological scholars ignored the book, it found its way into Washington's conservative circles, and by 1989 Olasky was offered the well-paying Bradley scholarship at the Heritage Foundation.

In 1992, Olasky wrote "The Tragedy of American Compassion," an argument for transferring government social welfare programs to the church. In his book, Olasky cites his "conservative Christian" friend Howard Ahmanson as proof that faith can cure poverty, describing how Ahmanson "found that poverty around the world is a spiritual as well as a material problem -- most poor people don't have faith that they and their situations can change."

Ahmanson told me "The Tragedy of American Compassion" is one of his favorite books, as it articulates his long-standing views on government's role in social welfare. "For government, social service is at best a secondary responsibility; it's a primary responsibility for the philanthropic-religious sector," he explained. "Governments feeding people, and priests and nuns firing cannon in national defense, may sometimes be necessary; but they are not the norm."

In 1993, "The Tragedy of American Compassion" earned Olasky an invitation from political strategist Karl Rove to meet with the new, evangelical governor of Texas, George W. Bush. Eventually the man Time magazine dubbed the "unlikely guru" would become a key advisor to Bush, instilling in him the politics of "compassionate conservatism." And when President Bush signed an executive order to create a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in January 2001, Olasky was standing by his side, beaming with pride as he watched the new president sign his ideas into government policy.

Another man who owes the success of his work to Ahmanson is Bruce Chapman, a former Reagan administration official and founder of the Seattle think tank Discovery Institute , a bastion for the intelligent design movement, which seeks to debunk Darwin's theory of evolution with scientific-sounding arguments. Americans United for Separation of Church and State calls Discovery "the most effective and politically savvy group pushing a religious agenda in America's public school science classes."

Ahmanson has been a major funder of Discovery. According to the Baptist Press, this year Ahmanson granted $2.8 million to the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, Discovery's intelligent design wing. With 48 well-heeled research fellows, directors and advisors, almost all of whom have advanced degrees from respectable universities, the center has given intelligent design a level of influence traditional creationism has not enjoyed.

This September, Discovery lobbied the Texas State Board of Education to mandate language in its high school biology textbooks challenging what Chapman called "fake facts" in evolutionary studies. After a heated debate in which dozens of Discovery fellows and their opponents from the scientific community testified, a panel voted to adopt the textbooks after a promise from the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency that all remaining "factual errors" would be addressed by publishers before the textbooks get into the hands of students. Discovery hailed this as a major victory, but the effect is clear: The fact that both human and other mammal embryos have gill slits -- which proves to mainstream scientists that we share an evolutionary lineage with prehistoric vertebrates -- is slated for "correction."

Since Texas is the second-largest purchaser of textbooks in the nation (next to California), it has a major influence on what publishers decide to put in their books. And so, as it has gone with other cleverly orchestrated Ahmanson-funded campaigns, Discovery's small victory is intended to have national consequences.

Howard Ahmanson Sr. never let politics get in the way of his good name. Most of his $300 million fortune was made driving California's postwar housing boom through his savings and loan company, Home Savings & Loan (known today as Washington Mutual). In his later years, he spent as much as 60 percent of his fortune on philanthropy and today his name is emblazoned on a cardiology center at UCLA's Medical Center, an entire wing at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and one of Los Angeles' premier theaters. The young Ahmanson was raised to continue this legacy.

Howard Jr. was born in 1950, when his father was 44. By that time, according to Roberta Ahmanson, the elder Ahmanson was "in his palatial stage," feting visiting kings and queens and basking in the opulence of his three-lot mansion on Harbor Island, an exclusive peninsula jutting out into San Diego Bay. Meanwhile, young Ahmanson was tended to by an army of servants and ferried to and from school in a limousine. As he watched the world go by behind darkened windows, he was gripped with a longing to cast off his wealth and disappear into anonymity. He came to burn with resentment toward his father, a remote, towering presence who burdened him with high expectations. "I resented my family background," he told the Register in 1985. "[My father] could never be a role model, whether by habits or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted."

His youth was plagued with loneliness and loss. At age 10, his mother served his father with divorce papers. A few years later, she died. Then, when Howard was 18, his father died too, sinking him into spiraling depths of despair and therapy. To escape his background, Ahmanson drifted to the far-off plains of Kansas and enrolled part-time in college classes. "It was like taking the lid off a pressure cooker," Mrs. Ahmanson recalls of her husband's self-imposed exile.

Ahmanson returned to California to attend Occidental College, where he earned generally poor marks as an economics major. After graduating with a bachelor's degree, he spent a year backpacking through Europe and "being grungy," as he told the Register. He might have stayed there, living off his trust fund, if not for a bout with arthritis, an affliction he later would call his "miracle disease." This sent him back to the States, where he earned his master's degree in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington. Because he suffers from Tourette's syndrome, a disease that makes stringing sentences together a frustrating ordeal -- "like a slow modem," his wife explains -- the degree reflected a major triumph. In his single-minded determination to overcome his handicap, Ahmanson became fluent in Japanese, Spanish and German.

When Ahmanson came back to Orange County driving an old Datsun pickup and dressed in clothing more befitting a Seattle alt-rocker than a trust-fund baby, it was clear he was still struggling with the burden of guilt left to him by his father. With millions at his disposal, he had imposed an allowance of $1,200 a month upon himself. Most of his fraternity brothers from Occidental had become evangelical Christians while he was away and reconnecting with them also sparked a new interest for him. He joined a singles group organized by Mariners Church, a Bible-based, nondenominational church in Newport Beach, which he credits with his spiritual and social salvation. It was there, he told the Register, that he was convinced to take full advantage of his inheritance and to stop "cheating God."

Ahmanson sold his stock in his father's company and invested it in lucrative real estate acquisitions, with a goal of earning returns of 20 to 25 percent per year. That assured that his wealth would grow quickly, but it made him feel vulnerable to people who would manipulate his guilt complex to get a cut of his fortune. These were usually the people closest to him -- girlfriends, family members and friends. In one instance, his former roommate at Occidental asked him to fund his surf shop, explaining that the shop could bring in potential Christian converts off the street. Ahmanson wasn't convinced. "If you don't do this, these kids will go to hell," his roommate threatened. In that very hour, according to his wife, he became a full-fledged Calvinist, giving himself to Calvin's doctrine of predestination, which holds that God "elects" individuals for salvation based on factors beyond their control.

"If someone's eternal goal is dependent on him [Ahmanson] giving a grant, then we're all in trouble," Mrs. Ahmanson explained. "So that made Calvin's approach that God is in charge of all of this quite appealing." Ahmanson's sudden religious turn did not automatically lead him to right-wing political activism, according to his wife. He voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and, as Mrs. Ahmanson claims, was not politicized until 1979, when the Orange County Rescue Mission, a Christian homeless shelter where he played piano once a week, was condemned when the city of Santa Ana failed to issue it a conditional use permit. As Mrs. Ahmanson recounts, her husband was outraged by what he considered an act of government tyranny; as he stood on a picket line outside the doomed shelter, he became an ardent believer in God-given property rights and the spirit of capitalism.

But contrary to his wife's account, evidence suggests Ahmanson's political conversion was not exactly the result of a heroic epiphany. According to Sloan, founder of Project Tocsin in Sacramento, Ahmanson became a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon in the mid-'70s, so by the time he was picketing outside the Mission, he was fully immersed in the right-wing politics that are part and parcel of Chalcedon.

Whatever the case, Ahmanson's Calvinist ideology rapidly crystallized under Rushdoony's tutelage. As Mrs. Ahmanson told me, Rushdoony was like a father figure to her husband when he was young and wayward. "Howard got to know Rushdoony and Rushdoony was very good to him when he was a young man and my husband was very grateful and supported him to his death," she said, adding that they were with Rushdoony at his deathbed.

The Ahmansons today bristle at questions about their past alliance with Rushdoony: "It's like, 'Have you now or ever been?'" remarked Mrs. Ahmanson, comparing journalistic inquiries about her husband's links to Rushdoony to McCarthyite guilt-by-association tactics. Yet it is only by understanding this little-known cleric that one can grasp the philosphy behind Ahmanson's politics. "I discovered his works at a time when I had no clear vision for Christian philanthropy and no model that I liked," Ahmanson told me of Rushdoony. "Here was someone responding to questions that in the late '70s no one was even asking."

Rushdoony descended from six generations of Armenian priests, aristocracy in the world's oldest Christian country. His parents narrowly escaped the Armenian genocide, in which over 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by Turks attempting to "Ottomanize" the country. As a young boy growing up in New York, Rushdoony was haunted by tales of the slaughter that persisted despite impassioned pleas from the Armenian clergy for foreign intervention. As Rushdoony made his way through conservative seminaries during the 1940s and '50s, he was gripped by a bitter cynicism about the betrayal that became his driving force.

"His whole life's work was aimed at finding a philosophy that would stand against the kind of tyranny his parents had to flee," Ahmanson explained.

Rushdoony spelled out his philosophy in painstaking detail in his 1973 magnum opus, "Institutes of Biblical Law," which he self-consciously named after John Calvin's "Institutes of Christian Religion." In the 800-page tome, Rushdoony presents his vision for a new America in which the church subsumes the federal government and society is administered according to biblical law, or at least his interpretation of it. According to biblical law, he writes, segregation is a "basic principle," and slavery is permitted "because some people are by nature slaves and will always be so." Those who don't comply with Rushdoony's rules -- disobedient children, "pagans," adulterers, women who get abortions, repeat criminal offenders and, of course, homosexuals -- would be executed. Mrs. Ahmanson, who described Rushdoony as "quirky in some ways," qualified his extremism: "To impose the death penalty you need two witnesses. So the number of executions goes down pretty quickly."

Though Ahmanson has read "Institutes of Biblical Law," he told me he prefers books by Rushdoony that deal more explicitly with ethical and moral issues. One such book is "The Politics of Guilt and Pity," a polemical suite of caustic riffs on the pathology of liberals. In this book, Rushdoony writes: "The guilty rich will indulge in philanthropy, and the guilty white men will show 'love' and 'concern' for Negroes and other such persons who are in actuality repulsive and intolerable to them ... The Negroes demand more aid, i.e., more slavery and slave-care, and dwell on their sufferings."

There is no indication that Ahmanson shares Rushdoony's bellicose racism, but Rushdoony's scathing critique of "the guilty rich" resonated with the young man constantly beset upon by human parasites seeking a chunk of his money. In possibly his only published piece of work , a 1997 essay for the Acton Institute, a conservative religious think tank, Ahmanson parroted Rushdoony's harsh style and viewpoint: "The argument that we ought not do any particular thing because the poor exist is the argument of Judas, and if you hear it made, know that thieves are about who want to get their piece of the action."
As an avid reader, Ahmanson often explores literature beyond the Bible for insight on his struggle to harness his inheritance. As Mrs. Ahmanson told me, her family is captivated by J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- by her count, her husband has read "The Hobbit" six times. "Howard kind of identifies with Frodo," she said, referring to the heroic Hobbit who must destroy a magical ring to save the world.

In my latest conversation with Mrs. Ahmanson, in which she spoke by cellphone while strolling through an Orange County shopping mall on a search for socks and underwear for her teenage son, David, we negotiated my request for an interview with her husband. As she rattled off a litany of engagements he had to make before leaving the following week for a three-month tour of New Zealand, Japan and Australia, I heard a man's voice in the background and realized Ahmanson was there all along. "He'd talk on the phone but he doesn't want to. It just doesn't work well," she explained regretfully, hinting at her husband's Tourette's.

Though Ahmanson himself declined to sit down for a face-to-face interview, Roberta Ahmanson's interviews for this story were her first since a two-part L.A. Times story in 1992 on her husband's role in the Allied Business PAC. "They burned me so badly," she said of the Times. "The reporter didn't know anything and wasn't going to be taught." Her suspicion of the media was often apparent. While the premise for my interview was to discuss her and her husband's involvement in the Episcopal Church split, she bristled at the notion that they are involved in any way other than granting money. "They [Anglican Council officials] don't call us up and say, 'What do you want us to do?'" she insisted.

Unlike other Ahmanson-funded campaigns, Mrs. Ahmanson has assumed a personal role in the Episcopal Church split. She and her husband are longtime members of St. James Church in Newport Beach, a leading parish in the Episcopal Church's Los Angeles diocese where their "good friend" and Anglican Council CEO David Anderson served as rector until this year. (Anderson refused my interview request.) Mrs. Ahmanson, moreover, is on the board of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, a right-wing Washington think tank that shares ideas -- and an office in Washington -- with the Anglican Council.

The institute is directed by Diane Knippers, an evangelical Episcopalian and syndicated columnist who also happens to be a founding member of the Anglican Council and its acting executive director. She is the chief architect of the institute's Reforming America's Churches Project, which aims to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" mainline churches like the Episcopal Church in order to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence." This has translated into a three-pronged assault on mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal churches. With a staff of media-savvy research specialists, the institute is able to ply both the religious and mainstream media, exploiting divisive social issues within the churches.

"The larger framework for the challenge to the Episcopal Church is the ongoing right-wing effort to get control of the mainline denominations," says Alfred Ross, president of the Institute for Democratic Studies, a New York think tank that monitors anti-democratic political movements. "As the right looks to consolidate different squares on the chessboard, the mainline churches occupy key positions on that board."

The Institute for Religion and Democracy's project did not come together until 2001, when Knippers and her husband were invited by the Ahmansons for a five-week vacation in Turkey during which Mrs. Ahmanson says the Knippers "inveigled me to go on the [institute] board." Ahmanson then opened up his checkbook. IRS 990 forms show that, to go along with his $1 million to the Anglican Council, he made five anonymous grants totaling $460,000 to the institute in 2001, accounting for a 35 percent spike in its fundraising from the previous year.

The campaign against the Episcopal Church climaxed on Aug. 5 last year, just a day before the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson was scheduled to be elected as the church's first openly gay bishop. In a column titled "The Gay Bishop's Links," Weekly Standard editor and Institute board member Fred Barnes alleged that the Web site of a gay youth group Robinson founded contained links to "a pornographic website." Further, Barnes alleged, Robinson "put his hands on" a Vermont man "inappropriately" during a church meeting "several years ago." The institute shopped the column to various cable news networks but only Fox News broadcast it. Barnes did not return calls seeking comment.

Though Barnes' smear was discredited by a panel of bishops investigating the charges, it helped widen the rift within the Episcopal Church and isolate it from its global affiliates. Since Robinson's Nov. 2 consecration, 13 dioceses affiliated with the Anglican Council have threatened to break with the Episcopal Church and form a renegade network. Though the network has yet to congeal, the momentum for a full-blown split continues to build. And the Nigerian and Southeast Asian churches, which, like the Episcopal Church, belong to the global Anglican Communion, have broken off contact with the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church split is the best evidence yet that Ahmanson's plan to bring America closer to resembling Calvin's elitist "church of the elect," or what Rushdoony has called a "spiritual aristocracy," is working. The split is also the crowning achievement of Ahmanson's nearly 30-year career in the business of radically transforming the country. Though he still remains an unknown quantity to most Americans, he has surpassed his father's accomplishments, and in the process, vanquished -- or at least tamed -- his personal demons.

Reflecting on his prodigious achievements, Ahmanson has every reason to be satisfied. "I may have had 'a plan to change American society' once," he mused. "Now I'm just trying to be faithful with what I have."

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About the writer Max Blumenthal is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor

This is the first in the Orange County Register series of articles on extremist Christian Howard Ahmanson Jr's stealth buying of GOP politicians, effecting tremendous impact on the government policy which deals with private citizen morality issues.

As Jerry Sloan (Project Tocsin) , a long-time California religious-right researcher, said: "It is obvious Howard is trying to change his image. As I told the reporter over two months ago, I have seen nothing in Ahmanson's actions or demeanor that says he is not out to accomplish what he said in a 1984 article that he wanted to use his fortune to see hat we 'had Biblical law integrated into our everyday lives.'"

After this series, I will add other information I have collected over the years about this issue. Read it all, do your own searches, ask your own questions, and then decide for yourself: "What am I going to do to stop this process of installing a Christian theocracy as America's government?"

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Sunday, August 8, 2004

#1: Burden of wealth

By PETER LARSEN
The Orange County Register

When you are Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., you give away money and you never
expect to see it again.

But then a $3,000 contribution to the Republican running for governor
of Hawaii returned to Ahmanson - with no explanation, just a brief note
of thanks but no thanks.

The reason for the rejection seemed perfectly clear to Ahmanson and his
wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson.

Most of the gifts from their private philanthropy generate little
notice. But a handful of groups and individuals they support have drawn dark
clouds of controversy around them.

So some - such as Linda Lingle, now governor of Hawaii - find it easier
to reject the money than risk being tainted by the Ahmanson name.

"We figured it had to be this," Howard Ahmanson says over breakfast,
referring to their public perception - or misperception as they see it.

His hunch was on the mark.

A group called Hawaii Citizens for Separation of State and Church had
protested Lingle's acceptance of Ahmanson's contribution, describing him
as a "Christian supremacist" who backed an Old Testament-style penalty
of death by stoning for homosexuals, adulterers and incorrigible
children.

"The views of the contributor were quite different from the views of
the campaign," says Bob Awana, Lingle's chief of staff. "We just thought
in the heat of battle, getting ready for an election only 10 days out,
it could have turned into a lightning rod - and we didn't want it to."

The return of the Lingle check in late 2002 sounded an alarm for the
Ahmansons. As their names surfaced again and again - linked to hot-button
issues from opposing gay clergy in the Episcopal Church to science
texts challenging Darwin's theory of evolution - the alarms grew louder.

"When a politician sends money back, it's serious," Roberta Ahmanson
says.

The Ahmansons came to believe they had an image problem, which they
blame on the distortion, intentional or not, of their views by others.

They also came to believe that they held some responsibility to explain
themselves and their beliefs, so that people might understand them and
their work, which they see as a calling to do good in the world.

"It brought home that having our name attached to things could harm
causes that we care for, because we hadn't talked to the press and hadn't
made ourselves vulnerable," Roberta Ahmanson said.

"It didn't seem fair to me," she said. "Because then we couldn't give
to anything anymore. Because then we'd be tarred with this vision of who
we are that is false."

So Howard Ahmanson, the Home Savings and Loan heir whose zeal for
privacy had left him a shadowy figure in the minds of many, and Roberta
Ahmanson, a small-town Iowa girl who grew up to be a religion reporter,
decided to start talking.

Born into Riches

Howard Ahmanson Jr. arrived in this world Feb. 3, 1950, to parents who
had been married 17 childless years.

His father, Howard Ahmanson Sr., was 44, and had spent those years
building his Home Savings and Loan empire into the nation's largest.

His mother, Dorothy, was 42 and settled into her role as wife of a
business magnate, dividing her time between estates in Hancock Park in Los
Angeles and Harbor Island in Newport Beach.

The telegram Howard Ahmanson Sr. sent in the voice of his newborn son
hints at the excitement he felt at the birth:

"Just wanted you to know I arrived in town this morning in fine shape.
Weigh in at 7 pounds 9 ounces. Mother feels wonderful and glamorous as
ever. Suggest however you avoid the old man. He is slightly
psychopathic."

The boy looked to have won the birth-lottery jackpot: the only child of
a fabulously wealthy couple. Yet Howard Ahmanson Jr. remembers a
childhood of distance and difference, one that offered him everything he
could want but often little of what he needed.

He remembers guilt for the wealth that surrounded and smothered him. He
remembers the crushing disappointment he felt when his parents divorced
as he turned 10.

And always, his social awkwardness, odd mannerisms and the awareness of
being somehow different, which four decades later finally would be
diagnosed as Tourette's syndrome - a neurological disorder of physical and
verbal tics, often coupled with conditions such as obsessive-compulsive
disorder.

His consciousness of the family fortune - the privately held Home
Savings had assets of $2.5 billion when his father died in 1968 - emerged
around age 7.

"I went through a false religious conversion at the time a little bit
of awareness of what Jesus had to say about money and being aware that I
was greedy and enjoyed my toys," he says.

Concerned that God might be keeping a scorecard on which the rich get
black marks, Ahmanson tried to eliminate the evidence from his bedroom
in Harbor Island. Already bookish, he carted his library to an adjacent
room.

"I tried to move into denial," he says. "I thought maybe I should
abstain from them or not look at them."

He also grew to resent the servants who took care of his every need. At
summer camp on Santa Catalina Island he was chagrined to learn he
didn't know how to fold his clothes. His short stint as a Cub Scout fizzled,
partly because he lacked the basics to earn his badges.

"My view of those people is they had a vested interest in my not
learning any skills," Ahmanson says.

Often alone in a sprawling mansion with only the servants, Ahmanson
spent hours with the books he had temporarily abandoned.

All his reading and a natural intelligence helped him speed through
school - finishing second through fifth grades in just two years at the
now closed St. James Day School in Newport Beach. Yet as he soared
academically, he struggled emotionally to keep up with his older classmates.

At Lincoln Junior High in Newport Beach, kids quickly noticed three
traits that have helped define Ahmanson throughout his life: he was very
rich, he was very smart, and he was very different.

At first, the servants sent him to school in a limousine, dressed in a
suit, carrying a briefcase. It embarrassed him deeply, Ahmanson says.

A plea to his father resulted in a discreet arrival around the corner
from school. Hiding his intelligence and his behavioral differences was
harder.

In English class once, he was reading a book tucked inside his
textbook, recalls Michael Ray, a classmate at Lincoln and later at Occidental
College.

"The teacher grabbed it from him and said, 'Aha! You're cheating!' And
it turned out to be Shakespeare."

Ahmanson had tics and twitches and other personality quirks, and at
Lincoln they started to worsen.

"When I was under stress, I'd try to stop myself from having fits - I'd
bite my finger and my hand. But it only became part of (the fit)."

At 13, Ahmanson moved from his mother's home on Harbor Island to his
father's in Hancock Park, "to "see if I'd pick up some machismo from him
- I did not," he said.

He enrolled in the Black-Foxe Military Institute, a private school in
Hancock Park where the rich and famous often sent their sons.

"I didn't enjoy it when they got really picky, but there was something
Tourettean-ly ritualistic about marching around that was not
displeasing to me," Ahmanson said.

Scott Allen met Ahmanson when both were 13-year-olds at Black-Foxe, and
soon they were best friends.

Allen remembers the kids being tough on Howard: "He absorbed it; he
kept bouncing back. I saw him irritated a couple of times, but I don't
think he has a mean bone in his body."

Allen says he always thought he and his pal were academic equals, until
the SAT scores came back and Ahmanson left him in the dust.

"I'm in shock," Allen remembers. "I say, 'Howard, how could you score a
798 verbal and, oh, a 685 math?' And his reply instantly is, 'Well, I
guess I just had a bad day in math.'

"Absolutely no mercy. I thought, 'This guy is great.'"

a misdiagnosed illness

Ahmanson's relationship with his father was always difficult. With his
mother, life was easier, though often at a distance.

Dorothy Ahmanson got the house on Harbor Island in the divorce, and as
a teenager, Ahmanson spent every other weekend there. She remarried -
the Dorothy Grannis Sullivan University Club at the University of
California, Irvine, is named for her. And according to her son, she struggled
with alcohol and prescription-drug abuse off and on throughout her
life.

His father - whom the New York Times once profiled as "one of the least
known but wealthiest financial magnates" in the nation - hobnobbed with
the rich and powerful, raced yachts and collected art. Yet when it came
to his only child, he struggled as father to a bookish introvert who
resented his parents' divorce and the gulf between him and them.

But in spring 1968, at the end of his freshman year at Occidental
College, Ahmanson says, his father indicated in a phone call that he was
willing to work on the unspoken problems between them.

"He said, which was way hard for him to admit, 'We've been growing
apart,'" Ahmanson says. "I think he was willing to admit that he made me
nervous, that there was something I disliked about him. And he had never
been willing to admit that before.

"It didn't change much, but it just gave me a crack - maybe he was
going to try. Maybe there was something worth the risk.

"And then he died."

Howard Ahmanson Jr. was with his father and stepmother, traveling in
Belgium, when his father suffered a fatal heart attack. In the shock of
that moment, Ahmanson says, he felt mostly relief.

"If anything, it was kind of like someone who's diving way below sea
level suddenly being brought up to sea level," he said. "The pressure was
taken off."

Home alone in a 14,000- square-foot mansion in Hancock Park, the
18-year-old heir tried to find a routine.

He got a low-level job at the Beverly Hills branch of his father's
savings and loan empire and drove himself there every day. But some in his
family - one cousin, in particular - felt his behavior was alarming,
and sent Ahmanson to see a psychiatrist at the University of California,
Los Angeles.

In the past, Ahmanson has acknowledged needing therapy after his
father's death. Now, he says he wants to tell the whole story in hopes it
will be healing - that he was "misdiagnosed as schizophrenic" and sent for
two years to a Kansas mental institution.

As he sat in the office of the UCLA doctor, talking about himself in
the summer of 1968, Ahmanson says he didn't grasp why he was there.

"I don't know what they thought," he says of his cousin and the doctor
who committed him. "I was not contemplating suicide at the time, I can
tell you. I had no thought of suicide or self-mutilation. I have had at
various points in my life, but at that time I was not experiencing any
such thoughts.

"I was having problems, but I was functioning the day before I went in.
As far as I'd had any symptoms or behaviors, I'd always had them."

Even after arriving at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, he thought he
was only going to continue his therapy.

"I thought it was some kind of dorm where I could spend more time,"
Ahmanson says of the campus-like clinic founded by Karl Menninger,
considered the father of American psychotherapy.

But then a clinic worker asked for his wallet - and refused to give it
back.

"I knew they would use force to keep me from leaving," he says. "You
asked if it was voluntary? If Mary, Queen of Scots, went voluntarily to
England, so I went voluntarily."

For 18 months he lived at the clinic, considered at the time to be "the
Mayo Clinic for the mind," a place the rich and famous send their
problem children, Ahmanson said.

"If I was there now, I'd organize an inherited-wealth group."

Though some patients were treated with drugs, Ahmanson says, he
received psychotherapy. In time, he was allowed occasional trips home for
holidays, community college courses in Topeka and a part-time job there as
a dishwasher at a Ramada Inn.

After two years of treatment, the last six months in a family care
home, Ahmanson was released, he said.

Only a year or so later did he get a better idea of what the doctors
thought. In a letter from a Menninger official to the draft board,
Ahmanson read their pronouncement: "Schizophrenic reaction, the prognosis is
not good."

Howard Ahmanson returned to Los Angeles, perhaps the richest
20-year-old in town, yet almost completely in the dark about his wealth.

finding god

He moved in with his cousin, Bob Ahmanson, resumed his studies at
Occidental, and lived on whatever money was provided him by his cousins -
or, upon turning 21, his trust. He ignored relatives' attempts to explain
how he could access his money.

"I would rather have wanted to be able to say I was not rich and be
telling in some sense the truth," he says, declining to provide any
details of his inheritance or wealth. "I wanted to think that I did not have
access to it."

At Occidental, as he completed a degree in economics, he also played
rugby - "I could barely run fast enough, but they kind of valued my
spirit" - joined the Order of the Mystic Apes fraternity, and taught himself
how to ride a bicycle.

After graduation in 1972 and eight months kicking around Europe, the
onset of near-crippling arthritis sent him back to Los Angeles to seek
treatment.

"I was using a cane at 23; my life was over," he said. "I was willing
to consider new options."

One choice he embraced was an invitation by some friends from
Occidental to tag along to services at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in
Pasadena.

"I had always believed in God," Ahmanson said. "But I didn't have a
clear definition as to what he was or what he wanted."

As a child, he went to Sunday services with his parents, though he
believes they were there more because of tradition than religious
conviction: "My mother's beliefs were closer to New Age, and my father's beliefs
were closer to old liberal - and neither of them were Christians as I
would define the term today."

At Lake Avenue, he listened to the sermons, studied Christian books and
made up his mind while on a church retreat at Lake Arrowhead.

"I decided I would at least believe or act as if I believe that Jesus
Christ was Lord and had died and risen from the dead," he said.

discovering his mission

In the 1970s, his interest in linguistics and religion took him to
Texas, where he applied, unsuccessfully, to be a Bible translator and
earned a master's degree in linguistics at the University of Texas at
Arlington.

Despite his inheritance, he lived modestly - for many years he resided
in an Irvine condo on a monthly stipend of $1,200, wearing used flannel
shirts. He drove an old Datsun pickup truck with a foam pad in the back
to sleep on. When he traveled, he flew coach and stayed in run-down
hotels.

His quest to learn more about religion led him to a greater acceptance
of his wealth and a desire to use it to do good.

The writings of C.S. Lewis satisfied a need to reconcile his intellect
with his faith - "He seemed to be a Christian with intelligence who
connected his spirit with his mind, which evangelicals sometimes have
trouble doing," Ahmanson said.

For years, the books of the Rev. R. J. Rushdoony provided a cornerstone
to his religious education. But his support of Rushdoony - whose
writings on subjects such as homosexuality, race and law are controversial -
would become a millstone around his reputation.

Ahmanson immersed himself in Christianity, "this whole new
multidimensional world that I had to explore."

In 1978 - the year he cast a ballot for California Democrat Gov. Jerry
Brown - his interest in politics was piqued by a bitter fight over the
fate of the Orange County Rescue Mission, which was being squeezed out
of Santa Ana by a redevelopment project.

One night he decided to pay a visit to the mission, unannounced, even
though its director, Rob Martin, had been told Ahmanson might stop by
one day.

"I expected that with the name Ahmanson, which has a lot of cachet in
this state, that a secretary would call me and set something up," Martin
said.

But Ahmanson parked around the corner from the Second Street mission
and entered without anyone noticing.

"He came in and sat in the audience like he was a homeless guy," Martin
said. "Went through the mission, ate the meal, and when we were
assigning beds and getting guys showers, he came over and announced himself to
me.

"You can imagine my surprise."

The millionaire listened to the social worker, finding himself more and
more outraged at the idea that redevelopment helped the "haves" at the
expense of the "have nots."

"If the presence of the poor and the organizations that serve them is
inherently a blight upon the community, I think you can tell where that
goes," Ahmanson says. "It excludes them."

Ahmanson gave money to the mission to help in the legal battle against
the city, and when the mission moved to a new location he donated more
through the years.

His involvement with the mission increased his interest in politics.

"His father was known as Emperor Ahmanson in the '50s and '60s and
really used to snap heads when he'd walk down hallways," Martin says. "So
little Howard saw a lot of politicians come hat in hand to his dad."

But where his father approached politics from the practical point of
view - working the system to protect or improve his business interests -
"Howard came at politics from a philosophical point of view," Martin
said.

"I know they call him the angel of the religious right and all that
stuff," he said. "But when he comes at issues, he's coming from a
heartfelt belief that free markets and other things like that serve the poor.

"It's not a feint - 'Let me enjoy my freedom and not pay taxes.' His
heartbeat was with the poor."

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www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/08/08/sections/news/focus_in_depth/article_193470.php

Sunday, August 8, 2004

#2 'The world is your oyster'

The early building blocks of Howard Ahmanson Sr.?s success were not
financial riches, but a solid and loving family.

The fortune of philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. was built by his
father, a Los Angeles businessman.

According to the Ahmanson Foundation annual report for 2002, Howard
Fieldstead Ahmanson Sr. was born in Omaha, Neb., in 1906. By all accounts,
the early building blocks of his success were not financial riches, but
a solid and loving family. His father, an insurance man, was reported
to have told him nightly, "The world is your oyster." This sense of
personal affirmation, of the importance of confidence and belief in
possibilities became a hallmark of the man, in both his business and personal
relations.

After the sudden death of his father in 1925, Ahmanson Sr. moved with
his mother to Los Angeles. Within two years, he graduated with an
economics degree from the University of Southern California. Before
graduating he began selling insurance; H.F. Ahmanson Company quickly became the
largest fire underwriter in California.

On the eve of the Great Depression, he innovated an idea that would
become an industry staple - fire insurance for property under foreclosure.
Ahmanson was reported to have said the depression made him feel "like
an undertaker."

"The worse things got, the better they got for me," he told the New
York Times.

He married Dorothy Grannis, a student at the University of California,
Los Angeles, and in 1943 bought the controlling share in his father's
insurance company. During World War II, he and his wife moved to
Washington, D.C., where he served as chief expediter for the Aircraft Products
Division at the Pentagon for the Navy. By 1945 they moved back to Los
Angeles.

In 1947, inspired by the prosperity of mid-century Los Angeles, he put
together a merger that eventually became Home Savings and Loan
Association. The family business financed houses by the thousands through
construction loans on tracts and mortgages on homes and apartments. The
company also had a real estate arm, developing Baldwin Hills and
Laurelwood. Home Savings and Loan became the largest enterprise of its kind in
America.

In addition, he held the Ahmanson Bank and Trust Company, the National
American Insurance Company of Omaha, and the Southern Counties Title
Insurance Company of Los Angeles.

In 1950 his son, Howard Jr., was born. In 1952, Howard F. and Dorothy
Ahmanson established the Ahmanson Foundation, focusing in the early
years on grants to medical, cultural, human service and education in Los
Angeles. Howard Ahmanson Sr. assumed leadership of the foundation in 1961
and awarded major gifts to the Los Angeles Music Center, biological
research at USC, and the California Museum of Science and Industry.

He served on the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles County Art
Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) and founded Otis Art
Associates. He served as trustee at USC, the California Museum Foundation, the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Performing Arts Council of the
Music Center and was appointed by President Kennedy as a trustee of the
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

He suffered a fatal heart attack on June 18, 1968, while traveling with
his son and his second wife, Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson. By 1972, the
Ahmanson Foundation began to receive the designated proceeds of his
estate, along with additional contributions from his nephews, William H.
Ahmanson and Robert H. Ahmanson, and his first wife, Dorothy Grannis
Sullivan, increasing the foundation's grant-making. By 2002, the foundation
had given more than 12,000 grants totaling about $555 million.

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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

#3: The strength of their conviction

The Ahmansons' clout doesn't sit well with people who disagree with them.

By PETER LARSEN

The Orange County Register

Part 3

Type "Howard Ahmanson" into any Internet search engine and the portrait of the man that emerges on your screen might seem alarming.
He's an "avenging angel of the religious right" who wants to keep gays from marrying or serving as ministers, and maybe apply the death penalty to them, too.

He's a "soul brother of the Taliban," scheming to use his electronic-voting-machine company to steal elections for Christian conservatives.
He's a "right-wing theocrat," a sugar daddy for creationists trying to squeeze God in alongside Darwin in public-school science classes.
In cyberspace, the most controversial corners of life tend to float to the top, which can make it hard to know what to believe when it comes to Ahmanson, his wife Roberta Ahmanson, and Fieldstead & Co., their private philanthropy.

Further muddying the water is that most of what gets posted on the Internet contains some measure - large or small - of the truth. A little digging makes things a bit clearer.

Ahmanson makes no bones about his conviction that homosexuals should not marry or serve as clergy. But he says he does not believe in stoning them.

He has contributed millions of dollars to campaigns for candidates and causes he considers socially conservative. But he has never owned any part of a voting- machine company - two cousins owned part of one in the mid-'80s, creating the confusion.

The Ahmansons spend lots of money to promote the view that Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't mean God didn't also have a hand in creating the universe. But they don't believe the whole job got done in seven days, the literal biblical interpretation some creationists advocate.

Even so, their strong opinions and deep pockets make many who disagree with them uneasy about the Ahmansons' ability to influence things.

The Ahmansons point out that many people share their views on various hot-button subjects, but it's also true that not very many can write a check with lots of zeroes to advance their causes.
"Money talks," said Frederick Clarkson, a Massachusetts writer who makes several mentions of Howard Ahmanson in his recent book, "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy."

"To the degree that there is a threat to constitutional democracy in the long run, and the erosion of religious freedom in the short run, Ahmanson owns a lot of responsibility for that."
Fundamental laws

The Chalcedon Foundation and its founder, the late Rev. R. J. Rushdoony - will likely remain the albatross around the Ahmansons' reputation, no matter how many humanitarian projects or art shows they sponsor.

A prolific writer, Rushdoony advocated ideas seen as extreme by many. "The Institutes of Biblical Law" is the one most often singled out for criticism and censure. In it, Rushdoony talks of the need to return to biblical law, using such examples as the death penalty by stoning for homosexuals and adulterers.

Howard Ahmanson first read Rushdoony in the 1970s, eventually served on the board of his foundation's board and donated more than $700,000, he says.

In a 1985 interview with the Register, Ahmanson described his goal as "total integration of biblical law into our lives," a statement that has clung to him ever since.

To those like Clarkson who believe in a stout wall between church and state, Rushdoony's ideas and the Ahmansons' cash stand as a threat to democracy: If biblical law is the law of the land, what place is there for people with other beliefs?

"It was his money that made it possible for Rushdoony to do as much as he did in his lifetime," Clarkson said. "Theocracy is the antithesis of democracy."

The Ahmansons say their views are misunderstood.

They do not want a theocracy to replace democracy in the United States, they say. And they don't want to make all Ten Commandments or all the biblical "case laws" the law of the land.

Yet at times, the way they explain their views - the fine lines they draw, the hypotheticals they consider - can leave questions about just where they stand.

For instance, Roberta Ahmanson says she believes the story about Jesus stopping a mob from stoning an adulterous woman changed the Bible's take on punishment from death to forgiveness for such acts as adultery.

Howard Ahmanson says he also doesn't think stoning is the answer, yet he stops just short of condemning the idea.

"I think what upsets people is that Rushdoony seemed to think - and I'm not sure about this - that a godly society would stone people for the same thing that people in ancient Israel were stoned," he said. "I no longer consider that essential.

"It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," Ahmanson said. "But I don't think it's at all a necessity."

Rushdoony and Chalcedon's views on homosexuals have also made the Ahmansons subjects of fear and suspicion.

"When you read R. J. Rushdoony, that's quite alarming," said Jerry Sloan, a Sacramento activist who, as a gay atheist, has many concerns about Rushdoony and Ahmanson. "Under any form of government, there's only room for godly families and everybody else is out. Or dead."
In the early 1980s, Sloan formed a watchdog group called Project Tocsin, to track what he describes as California's religious right. He quickly focused on Ahmanson's political donations.

"Any progress gays had made up to that time would have been wiped out," he said. "I'm concerned about my rights as a gay person, my rights just to live."

Social conservatives

What Ahmanson says he mostly sought in political candidates was social conservatism - opposition to abortion was near the top of the list - combined with economic and regulatory views that emphasized free markets and personal liberty.

By the early 1990s, his interest in reshaping the political landscape led him to join with four other well-to-do conservatives to form the Allied Business Political Action Committee.

The committee - and its successor, the California Independent Business PAC - also caused concerns for Democrats, as Ahmanson and his friends spent more than $4 million from 1991 to 1996 on campaigns, enough to help Republicans gain control of the Assembly for a brief period.

In 1994, after Allied candidates won 18 of the 19 seats that the committee targeted in the Assembly and three of four in the Senate, a Democratic Senate Caucus staffer warned, "The results were awesome."
Ahmanson, on his own, gave money to a group called the Education Alliance, which successfully backed social conservatives for local school boards.

Eventually, though, the political action subsided. Many elected with Ahmanson's help lost re-election bids or, in the much-publicized case of the Orange Unified school board, were recalled - despite Ahmanson giving $20,000 to help keep them in office. (He gave about 20 percent of that raised to fight the recall; teacher unions gave about two-thirds of the funds for it.)

"It was very scary," said Jim Toledano, Orange County Democratic Party chairman in the 1990s. "Knowing how hard it was to raise the bucks, to have people who could sit down and write a check that was equal to what you might raise in six months, that was scary.
"You can buy a lot of hate for the kind of money they had available and were willing to spend," said Toledano, who headed the county campaign against Proposition 22, the anti-gay marriage initiative that passed in 2000. "I don't know him, but my understanding is that he's one of these people who's very deeply committed to his beliefs, and puts his money where his faith is."

And that's not uncommon for the wealthy and politically active, says Toledano, who is gay. Whether it's Ahmanson giving to Republicans or billionaire George Soros giving to Democrats, people have the right to give their money to anyone they like.

"As a general principle, it's hard to argue with," he said. "But fundamentally, no one should have that kind of power."
The Gay Debate

When the U.S. Episcopal Church met last year to confirm an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire, the main groups fighting against it had close Ahmanson ties.

For several days before the vote, officials from the American Anglican Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy - both of which have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Ahmansons - were fixtures on TV or in newspaper articles, arguing against a vote for Bishop Gene Robinson.

American Anglican Council is run by their former Newport Beach priest, and Roberta Ahmanson is on the Institute on Religion and Democracy board.

The Ahmansons' opposition to gay clergy - combined with the support of Rushdoony and the $310,000 given to California's anti-gay initiative - have made them unpopular in the gay community.

Their opinions on homosexuality are formed by passages in the Bible that speak against it, they say. Of the two, Howard Ahmanson holds the stronger views, seeing homosexuality as an illness akin to alcoholism, which treatment might cure.

His beliefs are outside those held by mainstream psychiatry, though. The American Psychiatric Association in 1973 ruled that homosexuality is not an illness, and since then has said there is no scientific evidence to back those who claim to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals.

Roberta Ahmanson said that while she believes homosexuality is wrong, "if people in this society want to have homosexual relationships and they think that's the best thing for them to do, they have to be free to do that in a pluralistic society.
"You treat everybody like a human being," she said, noting that same-sex unions have been held at the hotel she and her husband restored in her Iowa hometown.

"What I told our hotel manager, who's a devout Roman Catholic, who was disturbed by this, I said: 'Look, this is your opportunity to show the love of Jesus to these people.' "

Others disagree with the Ahmansons' interpretation. At the Pacific School of Religion - the same Berkeley seminary Rushdoony graduated from in 1944 - professor Mary Tolbert says the Bible verses that speak against homosexuality should be viewed in the context of the times in which they were written.

"One hundred and fifty years ago, the big argument was over the Bible supporting slavery, and it does support slavery," said Tolbert, director of the seminary's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. "And yet we are now able to say that the biblical world view (on slavery) is wrong."

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

#4: Making an art of giving

The Ahmansons, through their donations, are on a mission to teach history and promote the arts.

By PETER LARSEN

The Orange County Register

Perry, Iowa

Take a walk down Willis Avenue in this small Midwestern town and it's hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about Roberta or Howard Ahmanson - $20 million buys a lot of good will in a railroad town where the trains no longer run.

"Perry was one of the saddest towns in four counties," said Liz Garst, a prominent Iowa Democrat and ACLU activist, remembering how things were before the Ahmansons bought and restored a handful of historic buildings.

"And Roberta Ahmanson is the good thing that has happened to them," Garst said.

While people in Perry give thanks to the hometown girl who married a California millionaire and never forgot her roots, in other communities, the money handed out by the couple sometimes is seen in a different light.

In Ohio and Texas, if the Ahmansons are known, it's probably as the money behind a push to place God alongside Darwin in science textbooks.

In U.S. Episcopal churches, their funding has helped fight the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy.

In political circles in many parts of the nation, their support for a theology known as Christian Reconstruction has created suspicion about their goals for government.

The Ahmansons don't shy from talking about the groups and ideas they back despite sometimes heavy criticism. They have strong beliefs and the cash to support them.

But they bristle at the idea their work is defined by its most controversial corners, while their benevolent projects in the middle ground are largely ignored.

SAVING PERRY

Roberta and Howard Ahmanson see plenty to cherish in the way things used to be, often finding in tradition a map for modern times.
So, as they consider projects, their interests often pull them toward work that embraces a classical set of values.

It might be religion; they define themselves as orthodox Christians.
It might be art; they'll soon sponsor a show in England of the works of the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio.

For Roberta Ahmanson, it's certainly her hometown.

Despite growing up with a sense of not fitting in with her peers in Perry, today she talks of her hometown in golden-hued tones of admiration for its people and respect for the values it represents.
So, when buildings that were important to her as a child became available, she bought them.

The Hotel Pattee was first. When it went on the market in 1993, Ahmanson bought it for $38,000, and the dilapidated building was gutted and reborn as a handcrafted tribute to the people of Perry.
But the hotel was just the beginning of what Roberta Ahmanson would eventually build here over 10 years and $20 million. The project evolved into a living museum - Hometown Perry, Iowa - to celebrate the way a Midwestern town used to be and how it grew and changed.
The hotel and a museum in the Carnegie Library preserve the past but also reflect the future.

"It's like walking into a small-town photo album and looking at the stories of the people," said Bill Clark, president of the project, which has collected more than 7,000 photographs and nearly 10,000 oral histories.

"There are stories of work and family and faith," he said. "Education. And, of course, loss. We lost 100 families when the railroad closed in 1977."

The town was settled by German, Irish and Swedish immigrants who farmed the fertile soil and later worked on the Milwaukee Road railroad. In the past 10 years, immigrants from Mexico and Central America have arrived - Latinos now are 30 percent of the population - and the museum will work to link their lives and stories.

"One of the things I'm proud of about Perry is that the project takes seriously the lives of everyday men and women, who are the backbone of any society," Roberta Ahmanson said. "Any society is only as good as those human beings."

FUNDING THE FINE ARTS

When she was 12, Roberta Ahmanson traveled by train to Washington, D.C., to visit her aunt and uncle - and the National Gallery of Art.
Around the same time, Howard Ahmanson developed a love of classical music through visits to his school by musicians provided by the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

The arts remain a passion for them and get a nice slice of their giving most years.

Roberta Ahmanson bought dozens of works for the Hotel Pattee - from the paintings and murals that cover its walls to the sculptures on the rooftops.

The couple sponsored a seven-month exhibit that wrapped up Saturday at Iowa State University's Brunnier Art Museum - "Grant Wood's Main Street," the first-ever showing of nine illustrations Wood drew for an edition of Sinclair Lewis' novel "Main Street."

Next year, the Caravaggio show debuts at the National Gallery in London.

In Orange County, Howard Ahmanson is the spotlight-shy sponsor of the Pacific Symphony's Frieda Belinfante Class Act program, which provides 40 elementary schools with a symphony musician-in-residence for a year and several concerts.

Belinfante, a Dutch Resistance fighter in World War II who was part Jewish and a lesbian, was the first conductor of the Orange County Philharmonic Society and the music educator who brought classical music into Ahmanson's boyhood classroom.

From those first seven schools, the program grew to 20 and then to 40, thanks in large part to the Ahmansons' initial pledge of $500,000 over five years, said Sue Totten, vice president of the Pacific Symphony. They later added three years and $300,000 to the pledge.
"We said, 'We'd like to honor you by naming this for you,' " Totten said of the orchestra's offer to Howard Ahmanson. "And he said, 'No, I think it would be more appropriate to name it for Frieda Belinfante,' which everyone thought was a wonderful idea."

DIFFERENCES ASIDE

Not long after University of Southern California religion professor Donald Miller published a history of the Armenian genocide, a former student - who works for the Ahmansons - called with a tip that they wanted to fund a project in that country.

Miller sent a proposal and quickly got an unusual answer - an invitation to spend more of their money if he wanted to add photography to the project.

"It was a wonderful experience on many levels," Miller said of the work he and his wife, Lorna Touryan Miller, were able to do. Along with photographer Jerry Berndt, they traveled many times to Armenia in 1993 and 1994, conducting 300 interviews to explore the hardships and hopes of citizens.

Before the book was published, the Ahmansons paid for a traveling exhibit of the photographs.

Miller says the Ahmansons didn't push their views on him. "Never once was there any suggestion of slanting anything this way or that way or giving any political interpretation to anything.

"I had complete academic freedom at every level," he said.
The book, "Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope," was published last year by the University of California Press.

Miller has had two other projects funded by the Ahmansons: one on the growth of the global Pentecostal Church, the other on the orphans of the Rwandan genocide. Again, the money came with no strings, he says.
"I myself am an extremely liberal Episcopalian and belong to an extremely liberal church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, which has been at the forefront of same-sex unions, which is diametrically opposed to what How ard and Roberta are committed to," Miller said. "I'm also a liberal Democrat.

"A lot of people assume these are ideologues of some sort, just narrowly funding something that fits their ideological agenda," he said. "They know who I am, they know the church I belong to and that has not precluded them funding projects I've done with them."

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Sunday, August 8, 2004

Giving generously to their causes

A list of the top 20 organizations the Ahmansons support.

Fieldstead & Co., Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's private philanthropy,
does not disclose how much it gives to the different groups and
individuals it supports. The Ahmansons, however, did agree to provide a list of
the top 20 organizations - by total amount given to each over the years
- that they support.

In order, they are: Rank Name Purpose Notes

1: Fullhart-Carnegie Museum Trust, Perry, Iowa The endowment funds
Hometown Perry, Iowa, a museum in the town where Roberta Ahmanson grew up,
established to ?celebrate the vital contribution small towns have made
to American life.? www.hometownperryiowa.org The Ahmansons gave at least
$4.6 million to the trust from 1997 to 2002, according to IRS
documents. The centerpiece of the museum campus, a restored 1904 Carnegie
Library, opened in May. The total investment in Perry projects is about $20
million.

2: Drew University, Madison, N.J. Since 1995, the Ahmansons have been
the sole funders of a team led by Drew University theology professor
Thomas Oden to publish 28 volumes of ?The Ancient Christian Commentary On
Scripture.? www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/accs Translations of nearly
everything written about the books of the Bible – mostly in Greek and Latin –
from Clement of Rome in 90 A.D. through the Venerable Bede in 750 A.D.

3: Discovery Institute, Seattle, Wash. Think tank that includes the
Center for Science & Culture, a leading proponent of the ?intelligent
design? movement. Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on the board of directors of the
institute, which also works in areas such as transportation, technology
and law. www.discovery.org ?Intelligent design? backers include
scientists who believe an intelligent being might have helped design the
species. Opponents – including the National Center for Science Education –
dismiss it as creationism wrapped in pseudo-science. www.natcenscied.org

4: Claremont Institute A think tank seeking ?to restore the principles
of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our
national life.? Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on the board of directors, as is
former Orange County Republican Party leader Thomas Fuentes. Roberta
Ahmanson is on the board of advisers. www.claremont.org The institute
favors limited government, supports property rights and ballistic-missile
defense and opposes gun control, gay marriage and affirmative action.
It is not connected with the Claremont colleges.

5: St. James Episcopal Church, Newport Beach Since 1990, the Ahmansons
have attended St. James, which on its Web site describes itself as ?a
biblically orthodox, evangelical church with charismatic roots.? After a
change in ministers there, Roberta Ahmanson switched to Redeemer
Presbyterian Church in Costa Mesa, while her husband and son remain at St.
James. www.stjamesnewportbeach.org Its former rector, the Rev. Canon
David Anderson, now heads the American Anglican Council, an Episcopal group
involved in the fight to keep gays and lesbians out of the clergy.

6: Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich. Roberta Ahmanson graduated from
Calvin College in 1972. www.calvin.edu The Ahmansons describe themselves
as followers of Calvinism, the theology created by John Calvin in the
16th century that emphasizes predestination and the literal truth of the
Bible.

7: American Anglican Council, Washington, D.C. Association of orthodox
Episcopal churches, currently led by the Rev. Canon David Anderson, the
Ahmansons? former rector at St. James Episcopal Church in Newport
Beach. More at www.americananglican.org Most prominently involved in the
fight against same-sex unions and against ordaining gays and lesbians in
the Episcopal Church.

8: Food for the Hungry, Phoenix, Ariz. Evangelical-based relief
organization with annual budget of about $76 million and programs in 37
countries in the developing world. www.fh.org Former president Ted Yamamori is
involved with another Ahmanson-funded project, research with a
University of Southern California professor into the social activism of the
global Pentecostal church.

9: Mariners Christian School, Costa Mesa Private school in Costa Mesa
with about 650 students in preschool to eighth grade. www.mcs-school.org
The Ahmansons sent their son, David, to Mariners for kindergarten and
first grade and donated to it in hopes it would offer ?a classical
education,? they say. After deciding the school was not headed in that
direction, they transferred David to St. Margaret?s Episcopal School in San
Juan Capistrano.

10: Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C. Think tank that
views domestic and foreign policy issues from a Judeo-Christian religious
and moral point of view. www.eppc.org

11: Biola University, La Mirada, Calif. Private evangelical Christian
university. www.biola.edu

12: Orange County Rescue Mission, Santa Ana, Calif. Religion-based
charity that helps the homeless with food, shelter, job training and other
services. www.rescuemission.org The fight over relocating the mission 25
years ago caught Howard Ahmanson Jr.?s interest and led him deeper into
politics and philanthropy, he says.

13: The Chalcedon Foundation, Vallecito, Calif. The leading organization
in the Christian Reconstructionist branch of theology, with beliefs
that include emphasizing biblical law for all. www.chalcedon.edu Founder
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony wrote about the stoning of homosexuals, adulterers
and incorrigible children.

14: INFEMIT USA, Washington, D.C. The International Fellowship of
Evangelical Mission Theologians does research, training and publishing for
evangelical missionary work in the developing world. www.infemitusa.org

15: Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. The public policy think tank
believes in ?free markets, individual responsibility, the power of
technology, and a determination to preserve America?s national security.?
www.hudson.org Fellows include Robert Bork, unsuccessfully nominated to the
U.S. Supreme Court by former President Ronald Reagan.

16: World Vision, Federal Way, Wash. International Christian relief
organization that works in 99 countries in the developing world.
www.wvi.org
17: Maranatha Trust, Washington, D.C. Charity that does micro-enterprise
economic projects in the developing world, making small loans to help
the poor work their way out of poverty. Maranatha often works in
conjunction with a similar charity, Opportunity International.
www.opportunity.org.au

18: National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families,
Cincinnati, Ohio Advocacy group that works to promote Christian morals and
attitudes on issues of sexuality. www.nationalcoalition.org

19: SEN USA, Hobart, Ind. Evangelical Christian missionary group working
in Central and Eastern Europe. www.citygate.org
20 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Madison, Wis. Evangelical
Christian organization that works on 560 college and university campuses
across the nation. www.intervarsity.org The affiliated InterVarsity Press is
publishing the ?Ancient Christian Commentary? series mentioned above.

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This copyrighted information has been posted as an information source only.

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The Ahmansons reveal their concepts of afterlife, their favorite pop
songs, and what constitutes a perfect day.

Howard and Roberta Ahmanson were asked to answer some personal
questions. They responded in separate e-mail messages.

Q. Favorite (or most meaningful) Bible verse?
A.
Howard: Psalm 37
Roberta: Lots of people in the Baptist tradition have what they call "a
life verse." I don't. There are different passages of Scripture that
have meant a lot to me at different times. But, one is central to my
life, and it meant a lot to me as a journalist. It is John 8:32, words of
Jesus: "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
Coming from my background, I always wanted to know what was true and
what wasn't, what mattered, what didn't. Of course, Jesus was talking
about the truth of the universe, the truth that sets us free from our
brokenness. But, even the partial truth that can be learned from honest
reporting contributes to that larger truth, and that was what drew me to
journalism.

Q. Biblical person with whom you most identify?
A.
Howard: Moses
Roberta: That would probably be Peter. He always rushed in where angels
feared to tread. And, he was outspoken, which got him into trouble.
And, he promised things he couldn't fulfill, but in the end he was
faithful. And, he was forgiven.

Q. Favorite hymn?
A.
Howard: Probably "Ave Verum Corpus" or "O Sacred Head Now Wounded."
Roberta: That would be two. "Amazing Grace." That is haunting and
powerful. It is especially poignant when you learn the words were written by
a man who had captained a slave trading ship. He repented of that when
he became a Christian and worked for abolition of slavery. John Newton
was his name. The other is "For All the Saints." I love Ralph Vaughn
Williams' arrangement. It is just a joyous hymn celebrating the diversity
of the church.

Q. What sin have you most often committed?
A.
Howard: Pride.
Roberta: Now that is a loaded question. It would be hard to tally them
all up and single one out. I'd say my presenting sin is rushing in
before I think. Also, I often think I can do things on my own and move
ahead, without spending time with God or with others. I am learning, but I
have a lot to learn.

Q. What will heaven be or look like?
A.
Howard: It will be the eternal presence of God without barriers. I
would like to imagine that it looked rather like a countryside around
Carefree or Tucson, but what that really means is that that countryside
arouses longing that can only be fulfilled in heaven.
Roberta: Honestly, I don't know. All the allusions in the Bible suggest
it will be beautiful. It will also be real. We will be in the presence
of God. I used to tease my grandmother that she would have a gold
sewing machine in heaven because her natural talents would be fulfilled and
used there. She thought I was quite wrong. I still think I may have
been on to something. We won't be disembodied spirits. We will be real. It
will be real. I only hope I get there.

Q. What did you think of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ?"
A.
Howard: No answer.
Roberta: I thought it was courageous. It was very moving, a portrayal
on film of the Stations of the Cross. Sometimes it didn't seem like a
movie. The people who came off worst, I thought, were the Romans,
particularly the seemingly sadistic soldiers who scourged Christ. I've read a
fair bit of ancient history and scholars like Peter Brown at Princeton
describe the kind of torture Roman soldiers regularly performed. From
that reading, Mel Gibson's portrayal was painfully accurate.

Q. What book (or books) are you currently reading?
A.
Howard: I just started a history of Donatist Church of North Africa.
The best book I finished in the last few months was Philip Bobbitt's "The
Shield of Achilles."
Roberta: It's a list. I read several things at once. I just finished
"From Dawn to Decadence" by Jacques Barzun, "Thunder at Twilight: Vienna
1913/1914" by Frederic Morton, and "The Institutes of the Christian
Religion" by John Calvin. I always keep a fiction book or murder mystery
going at bedtime. I just finished Lindsey Davis' "The Accusers." Now I'm
working on Alexander McCall Smith's "The Full Cupboard of Life." I love
the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Just terrific. Others on my
stack now are "Art and Poetry" by Jacques Maritain, "The Business of
Heaven" by C.S. Lewis, "The Rise of Christianity" by Rodney Stark, "The
Secular Revolution" edited by Christian Smith, and "Delights and
Shadows" by Ted Kooser, a great poet from Nebraska. And, I'm reading through
the Daily Bible, New International version.

Q. Who is your favorite artist or work of art?
A.
Howard: At the moment, Bernini's "David," which you can see at the
Borghese. He's wound up to sling the stone. I like it so much better than
Michelangelo's!
Roberta: That is tough, too, as I like so very many. Probably my two
favorite works of art are Titian's last painting, a pieta that hangs in
the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice; and Michelangelo's last, and
unfinished sculpture, another pieta that is house in the Sforza Museum in
Milan. Both are so tender, so moving. And, I love Mantegna. His
deposition at the Brera in Milan is incredible. He was a master of
foreshortening. All that talent focused but connected to the heart. My favorite
architect is Antoni Gaudi from Barcelona. I love La Sagrada Familia, but
Park Guell is a place I just love to be. In 20th century, I love, of all
people, Mark Rothko. Also, Stanley Spencer and Rouault. And, I like
Tapies, the Catalan artist and sculptor. Another I like is Joan Miro.

Q. Who is your favorite composer or work of music? (And special for
Howard: What is your favorite music to play on the piano?)
A.
Howard: It tends to run to Beethoven or Mozart. I haven't touched the
piano in years, but when I did, my friends were especially appreciative
of my renditions of "Desperado" and the theme from "Chariots of Fire."
Roberta: I like Vaughn Williams and Mussorgsky. Music isn't my strong
point. I also like Dvorak, but then he wrote or finished the "New World
Symphony" in Iowa. I also love Rodrigo's "Aranjuez."

Q. When you were in high school or college, what was your favorite pop
song(s)?
A.
Howard: I had broad tastes, but the most interesting in my younger
years was the instrumental surf sound of Dick Dale and his followers. Since
1970, Don Henley of the Eagles is at the top of my list, and some of
Jackson Browne, despite his politics - Browne was never an evangelical,
but I think he crossed paths with the early Calvary Chapel people in
Orange County.
Roberta: I liked Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; Simon and Garfunkel;
Anne Murray; Judy Collins; Janis Joplin. Probably, my very favorite
song or at least one of the tip five was Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire"
sung by Judy Collins. I liked "You Needed Me" and "Danny's Song" sung
by Anne Murray. And, "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul and Mary.
You get the picture.

Q. What is your favorite movie?
A.
Howard: "Chariots of Fire" or "Casablanca."
Roberta: Tough again. Probably "Casablanca." "Chariots of Fire" is
close second. Then, "High Noon."

Q. What is your idea of a perfect day?
A.
Howard: One where I can get up fairly early and then lie down for about
an hour in the late afternoon which I usually manage to do nowadays.
Roberta: First, to sleep in. Then have a leisurely breakfast somewhere
like Ramos House Cafe in San Juan Capistrano with lots of time to read
and drink iced tea and cappuccino. Then a walk, maybe on the beach.
Maybe a museum, an art museum, more reading. Then a nice leisurely dinner
with family at a place we love and are known - Il Fornaio,
Rothschild's, Roy's, Aubergine, maybe Bayside. Maybe a movie. A day with no
timetable and no pressure and lots of time to read and think.

Q. What is your favorite book?
A. Roberta: This wasn't on your list, but considering what we do most
of the time, I thought I'd include it. It's hard to answer, there are
lots. But, I read Dorothy Sayer's "Gaudy Night" over and over. And, I
reread "The Lord of the Rings," the whole trilogy, again and again. My
other favorite authors would be C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Madeleine
L'Engle, P.D. James, Tony Hillerman, Lindsey Davis. Lately I've read a lot
of history - William McNeil and Jacques Barzun. Sociology - Rodney
Stark, James Davison Hunter. I love Marilynne Robinson, "The Death of
Adam." There's always lots to read.

CALIFORNIA's RECALL ELECTION: Is the Campaign of State Assemblyman and Gubernatorial Candidate, Tom McClintock, Run and Financied by Religious Extremists?
Maybe Postponing the Vote Until March is a Good Idea After All.

--by Celeste Harrison Whitlow
www.politicalamazon.com

The California governor-recall media coverage has been widespread, abundant, and laden with a lot of background details of some of the candidates and the people who work as their advisors.

We now all know that Arnold Schwarzenegger' has said some eyebrow-raising things about women.

We now all know that governor Gray Davis, Lt. Gov. Bustamente, Rep. Tom McClintock AND Schwarzenegger all have received money from special-interest groups.

We know about the parentage of one of the candidates, the birthplaces of the candidates, and many other interesting bits of information which the media has been quite eager to investigate and publish for the public's review.

The media has been very interested in publishing lots of information about Arnold Schwarzenegger's advisors, with the belief that this information is important because these advisors will help shape Schwarzenegger's policies, campaign strategies, and, if elected, Schwarzenegger's governing policies, as well.

Yet very little information is being published about the advisors and funding sources of Schwarzenegger's GOP rival, Tom McClintock.

RELIGIOUS EXTREMIST ADVISOR, JOHN STOOS

Until today, the major media outlets have failed to address the fact that John Stoos, the deputy campaign manager for candidate Tom McClintock (Republican State Senator) is not only a religious extremist who advocates legislating "God's law" (or Old Testament law, Mosaic law) into public law, but also a member of the "People's Advocate" group which launched the California governor's recall efforts. In addition, prior to Stoos' campagn position, Senator McClintock employed Stoos $93,720 a year as his top legislative assistant.

Stoos is a Christian Constructionist. Briefly, Christian Constructionists believe it is their right to, by stealth, dishonestly, or any other means subvert the American government and install Mosaic Law as through laws by which all American citizens will be governed.

And Mosaic Law is not for sissies, either. Under the Christian Reconstructionists' version of Mosaic Law, being homodexual, a woman who marries without an intact hymen, or a rebellious teenager would all be crimes for which one could be executed. There would be no need for prisons because if a person committed anything interpreted as a crime under Mosaic Law, depending on the seriousness of the crime, they would either be executed, or made a slave of ther victim so the damages could be worked off. Under the Christian Reconstructionists' plan for America, women would be inferior to men and unable to own property, and only "true believers" would be welcome in America. There would be little tolerance for Jews, Buddhists, or any other belief system other than the Christian Reconstructionists' interpretation of the Old Testament.

John Stoos, and other Christian Reconstructionists (including McClintock's long-time major source for campaign funds, billionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr), as well as other radical Christians and polticians, belongs to a powerful California Republican group which has, by utilizing behind-the-scenes stealth, diligent work, planning, and lots of money from radical-religious-right funders (including Christian Reconstructionist billionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr.) morphed the California Republican Party platform into something that fits their own far-right religious ideas of the rules and laws by which Californians are to live.

They have, in fact, by stealth, taken over the once moderate California Republican Assembly, and made it into a radical Christian organization by which they have been able to largely control the type of candidate allowed to run as a Republican in California. They have accomplished this by utilizing funding from Ahmanson to get their hand-picked candidates (such as current Senator Tom McClintock, who has been--and is currently being---heavily funded by Ahmanson) elected to party positions and government offices.

According to the Mother Jones Magazine 1998 article, "God's Vice Regents" (http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/cra.html):

"Members of the Bible-waving CRA—which now bills itself as the "conservative conscience" of the state GOP—hold the top 13 elected spots in the party leadership, from state chair on down to second assistant secretary. In addition to the top posts, CRA members now make up roughly two-thirds of the California Republican Party's 1,700 voting members. That means they decide whom to nominate in the primaries—and whom to smear using their considerable resources of influence and money. Today every statewide GOP candidate courts CRA for its endorsement, including Attorney General Dan Lungren, who has already "interviewed" with CRA for his gubernatorial bid next year."

How does this stealth process work? How was it that John Stoos and his cohorts were able to, in less than a decade, subvert and then commandeer the California state Republican Party platform?

According to John Stoos in the 1998 God's Vice Regents article: "Basically, there's two places you have influence: one is in the nominating process in the primaries, where you can elect people in ideological agreement with your views, and the other is in the party structure...And who pays attention to this stuff? You literally have to plan months and years ahead to know where the openings are."

The Mother Jones 1998 article summarizes the process very nicely:

"That's just what CRA did, patiently building their base below the political radar. Beginning in the early 1990s, they filled school boards, city councils, and Republican Party county central committees with like-minded religious, anti-abortion colleagues. Under the bylaws of the state party, these elected officials—and even nominees who lose in the general election—are allowed to appoint voting members of the state party. The party entity called the county central committee was key to the CRA's technique, says Bob Larkin, a Simi Valley Republican who has battled the CRA conservatives for years. Before 1990, he says, it was hard to find people interested in running for these lowly local committee seats. Then conservative Republicans stepped in and filled them with their people. Seven years later, the CRA swept the party elections of February 1997, winning every elected seat on the state party board. Larkin felt the wrath of the CRA when he ran for the California Assembly in 1996. In 1992 he had angered the CRA by launching a campaign to wrest control of the party's Ventura County Central Committee away from the conservatives. In reprisal, the CRA backed conservative Tom McClintock, who defeated Larkin in the 1996 primary and ultimately won the general election. "They're organized and dedicated," says Larkin, "and mainstream Republicans are neither, so a very small group can take over." " (Mother Jones, "God's Vice Regents," 1998).

What would a California run by CRA-approved and -supported candidate, Tom McClintock, and his Christian Reconstructionist deputy campaign manager, John Stoos, mean to Californians?

"The CRA's principles support the right to bear arms, strict interpretation of the Constitution, limited government, and "fair" trade and sovereignty. They condemn the separation of church and state, abortion, affirmative action, women in combat, and homosexuality. And members—even Frank, who is Jewish—advocate legislating by the Bible. "Legislation should be biblical principles put into action," Frank says. Asked about the differing versions of the Bible used by various religions, he contended that every religion—even Buddhism—espouses a set of principles similar to the Ten Commandments. Stoos, in an article for the Chalcedon Report, a journal of the radical Christian Reconstructionist movement, goes so far as to call Christian politicians God's "vice-regents...those who believe in the Lordship of Christ and the dominion mandate." The "dominion mandate," Stoos told the MoJo Wire, "is that individuals are impacted by salvation. You will want to obey God's commandments, and to the extent you do that, you start being a better person. ...If there are enough of these groups in a community, the community is different. If government has a rule of law that is biblical justice, you will have freedom and liberty." As proof of his theory, he points to the repeal in the 1970s of laws prohibiting homosexual sex acts—biblical offenses. "The proof is in the pudding," said Stoos. "Since we lifted those laws, we've had the biggest epidemic in history." (Mother Jones, "God's Vice Regents," 1998).

One can also get an idea of where John Stoos--remember, an important Republican analyst, consultant and strategist--is heading with his plans for governing California by reading some of the articles he has written for the Christian Reconstructionist organization, Chalcedon (founded and led by J.R. Rushdoony, considered to be the father of Christian Reconstructionism, and someone who has--by his writings which are racist, antisemitic, and a call to true believers everywhere to take action--given legitimacy to a wide range of nutballs and hate groups who now claim they are doing God's will).

An example of Stoos' Chalcedon articles is "Democracy and the Depravity of Man" (http://www.chalcedon.edu/cgi-bin/GPrint2002.pl?file=report/2001feb/stoos.shtml). One immediately gets a good whiff of the them-and-us mentality Stoos employs in approaching the issue of "God's will" for America. In the essay, Stoos claims that the American republic was founded on the theological principal of the inherent depravity of man. It would appear that Stoos now limits depravity to Democrats, which he equates to socialists. God's hand, he says, may not long be stayed from destroying America, as long as abortion 'on demand' (try demanding anything from a doctor) is available."

Did you like that one? Here's another enlightening Stoos article (published in Chalcedon just a couple of months ago): Freedom Under the Fear of God (http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/2003junjul/stoos.shtml). This article starts out with a quote from the Bible that gives a clear indication regarding the kind of elected official that John Stoos believes should govern our state: "He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." (2 Samuel 23:3)

I believe if you asked California voters, "Would you be more likely, or less likely, to vote for a candidate who, as governor of California, would be primarily guided in his official gubernatorial duties by his own fear of his own particular God," the majority of them would start looking for the "Candid Camera" crew.

Clearly this mindset is at odds with California voters, which is, perhaps, why Stoos and his political cohorts take great pains to keep the voters ignorant of efforts and plans for turning California into an American Taliban

In the Freedom Under the Fear of God article, Stoos declares that there are only two ways to organize (legislate) a civil government, and that the one that isn't based on John Stoos' religious beliefs will lead to the horrors of Marxism and Nazism:

"Now this may sound simplistic, but these are the only two choices. Either people understand that basic rights come from God and choose to live in a proper fear of God by acknowledging His sovereignty, or people reject God and look to the wisdom and understanding of man to establish what is right and wrong. There are no other choices.
The former has been practiced by many countries in Europe and the West, and most consistently, albeit not perfectly, here in the United States. It has resulted in the greatest expansion of freedoms and liberties in the history of mankind.
The latter brought forth the French Revolution, the horrors of Marxist Communism in the twentieth century, and, of course, the ultimate humanist experiment of Nazism attempting to create the super race that would rule the world for a thousand years. (Freedom Under the Fear of God, Chalcedon June/July 2003).

Stoos ends this article with a clear picture of the type of civil government he advocates: "So, the next time someone objects to having "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance or "In God We Trust" on our federal reserve notes, ask him when it last was that he sat down and carefully read the Declaration of Independence. If he finds the language of the Declaration objectionable or dismisses it as irrelevant for our modern world, then ask him to explain to you what he would replace the principles of that great document with. If you discuss it with him, perhaps you can help him understand the wisdom of choosing to live under the fear of God in freedom and liberty. You might also explain to him that the alternative is certainly living under the fear of man, with the eventual tyranny and death which naturally flow from that choice, as demonstrated by so much of the 20th century." (Freedom Under the Fear of God, Chalcedon June/July 2003).

Remember: this man has played a significant role in the covert subversion of the Republican Party in California to something that more and more reflects Stoos' own extremist religious views, and currently has an important position on Republican candidate Tom McClintock's recall-election campaign!

Stoos has already shown he knows how to change a political group into a theocracy-advocating organization. Just think what he can, through Tom McClintock as governor, do to California!

But religious extremist and Republican Party strategist are just a few of the items on John Stoos' list of accomplishment. He also:

***Is a member of the powerful rightwing organization, Council of National Policy (As is McClintock's funding source, Howard Ahmanson, Jr). This secretive group provides private forum where political activists, politicians, religious-right celebrities, and funding sources can meet and plan mutually-beneficial projects. Rushdooney was a member, as are many religious-right leaders, Republican politicians, and powerful conservatives. The CNP has strict secrecy rules to keep outsiders,especially the media they do not control, learning of the members' identities and the plots that are hatched behind closed doors. For more information on the CNP, click here.

***Former executive director of Larry Pratt's Gunowners of America.

***Former official of the racist, anti-immigrant English First organization (http://www.englishfirst.org). ( English First and Gunowners of America have shared the same address in Virginia.)

***Former advisor to the California chapter of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition.

***Former assistant administrator for Republican Assemblyman Walter Herger.

***Chief of Staff for Republican Assemblyman Rob Markett.

***Former senior consultant for the state Republican caucus.

***Host of a talk-radio program, "Discussion," broadcast over a religious-program-oriented station.

***Was one of the "J Street Five" who were ordered by the court to pay $155,000 as a result of their "abortion counselling services" they rendered in front of a clinic where abortions were performed. In addition, the judge issued a permanent injunction against the the "J Street Five" forbidding them to continue the practice of "sidewalk counseling."

HOWARD AHMANSON, JR: WHERE WOULD TOM McCLINTOCK BE WITHOUT HIS OWN, PERSONAL, CHRISTIAN-RECONSTRUCTIONIST SANTA CLAUS?

Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (whose fortune comes from the Ahmanson-owned Home Savings and Loan) has used his billions to covertly influence our government, via behind-the-scenes funding of candidates and groups). Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist. In fact, for he has been a long-term Chalcedon board member, where he worked along side R.J.Rushdoony (the father of Christian Reconstructionism) to widen the influence of Christian Reconstructionism.

He has been a board member for the Claremont Institute.

Ahmanson's impact on California politics has been profound. In fact, he told the Orange County Register Register in 1985 that he planned to spend his fortune towards the integration of Biblical law into our every-day lives.

His impact has been felt in California's education systen. He was the major source of funds for a pilot program in Orange County, with the creation in 1994 of through Education Alliance PAC. The EA endorsed 36 candidates in 15 districts in an attempt to take control of local school boards, and claims a 33% success rate in that year's election. The EA's goals are remarkably similar to those of another Christian Reconstructionist group, Coalition on Revival, and the group they founded, the National Coordinating Committee, whose goal is to abolish public education in America.

Ahmanson was also the largest donor for the school-voucher initiative, Proposition 174.

He was the chairperson for the California Independent Business Alliance, from which came the Business Alliance PAC, which Ahmanson and three other wealthy businessmen formed to change California's laws by electing their own hand-picked candidates. The have spent millions towards this goal, and as of 1996 they had helped elect one-quarter of California's lawmakers in the legislature. In 1994 they backed the failed school-voucher Proposition, contributing $450,000.

In 1994, this small group of men, according to Common Cause, contributions were 10% of the contributions to through California Republican Party.

Ahmanson also belongs to the Council on National Policy, as does fellow Christian Reconstructionist, John Stoos.

Ahmanson has been consistently a very generous donor to Tom McClintock's political campaigns, including the current recall campaign where he spent $75,000 just to set up phone banks for McClintock. In addition, Ahmanson has been very generous in sharing his vast realm of political and financial influence with McClintock, which was vividly demonstrated on 09/26/2003 when McClintock made a very quick and unannounced trip to Colorado. In the recall election, McClintock has been largely ignored by California state GOP...until recently when they began trying to convince McClintock to quit the race and throw his weight behind Schwarzenegger. Unable to find GOP backing in California, McClintock's trip to Colorado was to attend a Council on National Policy fundraiser where CNP members (such as Ahmanson, Richard Viguerie, James Dobson, and Gary Bauer) endorsed McClintock and donated $100,000 to his campaign.

McCLINTOCK PULLS A "CASABLANCA"

With this long history of association with both John Stoos and Ahmanson, both of whom are advocates of forcing American citizens to live their lives under Mosaic Law, you might be surprised to hear from McClintock that he was completely unaware of Stoos' beliefs and voluminous Chalcedon writings.

The Los Angeles Times article of September 30 ("McClintock's Advisor Looks to Bible as Bases for Law") documents the most amazing exchange in which McClintock appears to be following the example of Inspector Renault, in the movie "Casablanca," who said "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" as he collected his winnings.

(begin quote) Over the past two decades, Stoos has been an activist on issues from abortion to gun control to the primacy of the English language in the United States. Many of his views are reflected in essays in the Chalcedon Report, published by a conservative religious organization in Calaveras County. The group envisions a society in which biblical law is the law of the land.
McClintock, who employs Stoos as his deputy campaign manager and until recently paid him $93,720 a year as his top legislative analyst, said in an interview last week that he was unaware of Stoos' writings.
"I completely disagree," McClintock said, with Stoos' vision of the anti-abortion city council and "completely reject" the idea that the nation's modern laws should be biblical.
"I was not aware that he was writing for this journal and I'm upset to find that out," McClintock said Friday in an interview at the Sacramento airport, between campaign appearances. "That disturbs me greatly."
John Feliz, McClintock's campaign manager, said he had been aware of Stoos' religious views for years but had no information that McClintock knew of them.
Stoos said he has not discussed his religious views with McClintock, adding: "He didn't hire me as his pastor. He hired me as his political advisor."
In an essay published in the Chalcedon Report in the summer of 2002, Stoos wrote: "Before you commit your time and talent to particular candidates, you should ask them some basic questions." Among the questions is whether the candidate "understand[s] the biblical principles upon which our nation was founded," and whether he or she subscribes to "serious magazines or journals like the Chalcedon Report."
McClintock said Stoos has not asked him such questions. "I don't discuss theology with anyone on my staff," said the senator. McClintock added that he is not among the publication's roughly 5,000 subscribers. (end of quote)

McClintock is lying and is well aware he is being advised by a religious extremist who wants to institute Biblical law as that which controls our lives...or he is completely clueless about the agenda of his top political advisors, and failed to even do an internet name search in the vetting process before he hired them to the inner circle of his staff.

Either way, it doesn't bode well for Californians who may end up, in the future, living under an American Taliban, thanks to politicians like Tom McClintock who are either too stupid or too avaristic to protect their constituents from subversion of their government by American-born Ayatollahs like Howard Ahmanson.

Because McClintock is just one of the Republicans elected to the California legislature by accepting money and influence from Ahmanson and his rich pals. Who knows what these other politicians have already done in office for their benefactors, and what surprises they have planned for us in the future?

CALIFORNIA RECALL CAMPAIGN: (LATimes) "McClintock Advisor Looks to Bible as Basis for Law

John Stoos' writings outline his vision of an anti-abortion city council and other such action by government. The candidate says he was 'not aware' of his aide's writings.

By Scott Glover
Times Staff Writer

September 30, 2003

John Stoos, a key advisor in the gubernatorial campaign of Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, has a dream:

"I dream of the day when a strong Christian majority is elected to a city council somewhere in America. This council could then pass a resolution declaring that abortion is now illegal in their city," Stoos wrote this year in a conservative religious journal.

"Of course, the city attorney would quickly tell them that they cannot do this, at which point he should be fired and a good pro-life attorney should be hired to replace him," he continued. "Next up would be the police chief, who would likely say he could not enforce such a law. Again, the council should accept his letter of resignation and hire someone who would "

Over the past two decades, Stoos has been an activist on issues from abortion to gun control to the primacy of the English language in the United States. Many of his views are reflected in essays in the Chalcedon Report, published by a conservative religious organization in Calaveras County. The group envisions a society in which biblical law is the law of the land.

McClintock, who employs Stoos as his deputy campaign manager and until recently paid him $93,720 a year as his top legislative analyst, said in an interview last week that he was unaware of Stoos' writings.

"I completely disagree," McClintock said, with Stoos' vision of the anti-abortion city council and "completely reject" the idea that the nation's modern laws should be biblical.

"I was not aware that he was writing for this journal and I'm upset to find that out," McClintock said Friday in an interview at the Sacramento airport, between campaign appearances. "That disturbs me greatly."

John Feliz, McClintock's campaign manager, said he had been aware of Stoos' religious views for years but had no information that McClintock knew of them.

Stoos said he has not discussed his religious views with McClintock, adding: "He didn't hire me as his pastor. He hired me as his political advisor."

In an essay published in the Chalcedon Report in the summer of 2002, Stoos wrote: "Before you commit your time and talent to particular candidates, you should ask them some basic questions." Among the questions is whether the candidate "understand[s] the biblical principles upon which our nation was founded," and whether he or she subscribes to "serious magazines or journals like the Chalcedon Report."

McClintock said Stoos has not asked him such questions. "I don't discuss theology with anyone on my staff," said the senator. McClintock added that he is not among the publication's roughly 5,000 subscribers.

Rob Boston, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Stoos' social vision "the antithesis of the separation of church and state. It's like a Christian version of the Taliban," he said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at USC, defended Stoos' right to express such opinions, but found his views troubling in someone with influence in state government.

"He encourages the open disobedience of the U.S. Constitution," Chemerinsky said. "It's the equivalent of the Southern governors who said they wouldn't enforce school desegregation and would fire anyone in government who tried to carry out the Supreme Court's mandate."

McClintock said Stoos' work in his state Senate office focused on fiscal issues, such as the effort to overturn the state's car tax and to reform the workers' compensation system. He has not worked on social issues that might more readily conflict with his religious views, McClintock said.

Nonetheless, McClintock said, "I'm very concerned that he's continued those writings since he joined my staff and I'll have a talk with him about that."

Stoos said Monday that the rigors of the campaign have not allowed time for such a discussion.

Over the years, Stoos' expression of his beliefs has caused him problems.

In 1989, Stoos and four other people were sued by the operators of a Sacramento abortion clinic for allegedly blocking the clinic's entrance and harassing patients. After a protracted legal battle, a judge ordered Stoos and the others to pay nearly $100,000 in attorneys' fees incurred by the clinic. As a result, Stoos filed for personal bankruptcy, listing that debt among many he could not pay.

Stoos said he repaid many of the debts later. He did not pay the attorneys' fees, he said Monday, because he did not agree with the judge's order.

In 1995, Stoos was quoted in a Northern California newspaper as saying that Jews "would not have total acceptance" in the Christian-based society he envisioned, and that though they would nevertheless be tolerated, they "would feel more at home" in Israel. The remarks, the Contra Costa Times reported, were made during a Berkeley panel discussion on religion and politics. Stoos participated as a representative of the Christian Coalition, a conservative group founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson.

Stoos maintains that he was quoted out of context, and that the Contra Costa Times later retracted the article and apologized to him in writing. Stoos declined to comment further.

In fact, the newspaper did clarify that the article did not mean to imply that Stoos was anti-Semitic or had made anti-Semitic remarks, and apologized for any misunderstanding the article might have caused. The clarification made no mention of Stoos being misquoted.

San Francisco attorney Martin Kassman, who was on the panel with Stoos and represented the American Civil Liberties Union, said there was no mistaking Stoos' message that day.

"He was clearly expressing his opinion that Jews are not equal to Christians as he defines Christianity in the United States that we are a lesser breed of U.S. citizen," Kassman recalled in a recent interview. He said he immediately challenged Stoos' comments.

Ann Swidler, then an associate professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and the panel's third member, said she did not recall precisely what Stoos said but was left with the impression that he "got a raw deal."

Swidler, who is Jewish, said her recollection was that Stoos argued that because America was a Christian country it was a tolerant country. "He said something to the effect of, 'That's why we're so tolerant of everyone, including Jews,' " she said.

"It was patronizing. It was politically incorrect and, I think, philosophically naive," said Swidler, now a full professor. But "did I think the guy said something reprehensible? The answer is I didn't."

Following his remarks, Stoos was asked to resign from an advisory board affiliated with the Christian Coalition, and did so. Ralph Reed Jr., then the coalition's executive director, called Stoos' remarks "outrageous and totally unacceptable" in a letter to the head of the Anti-Defamation League.

Stoos also resigned as executive director of Gun Owners of California. He did so, he told The Times, because he did not want the controversy to tarnish the reputation of the group.

Kassman said his concerns about Stoos were renewed when he saw his name in recent newspaper articles that quoted him on behalf of McClintock.

"It is very troubling that a major candidate for governor of California has a senior advisor who subscribes to the views Mr. Stoos subscribes to," Kassman said. "As a Jew who lives in California, I'd be very worried if we had a governor who had a senior advisor who believes that."

Asked about the comments attributed to Stoos in the 1995 Contra Costa Times report, McClintock responded: "If that's what he said, that's an absolutely outrageous and unacceptable comment."

Two years later, when Stoos was poised to go to work for McClintock, Republican Assembly members Gary Miller and Curt Pringle tried to dissuade McClintock from hiring him, citing his comments at the Berkeley forum and other issues.

"We believed he was divisive — and we were conservatives," said Miller, now a member of Congress from Orange County.

McClintock said in an interview last week that he subsequently had a long conversation with Stoos, and Stoos assured him that he had been misquoted and that the newspaper article had been retracted. McClintock said he took Stoos at his word.

Since that time, Stoos has written regularly for the Chalcedon Report.

In the January 2003 issue, he addressed the "homosexual agenda" in America. "If these sinners who desperately need the great gift of salvation in Jesus Christ can do so much in the power of the flesh to defend practices that the general public finds repulsive," Stoos wrote, "then what should we as Christians be doing to advance the kingdom of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit?

"The critical question," he continued, "is whether we as Christians are prepared to show the same resolve and discipline and do the kind of hard work that the homosexuals have done over the past fifteen years promoting their ungodly agenda. Lord willing, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can!"

In the April 2003 issue, Stoos wrote that "Christians are the only people who can restore the proper biblical understanding of government to our modern system."

Stoos' writings and comments are laced with provocative references to those he sees as adversaries. Rival politicians, he says in an essay playing off J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," are "our own modern evil power lords."

Planned Parenthood employees are "baby killers" from an "abortion industry" bent on maintaining access to their "profitable little clients."

The AIDS epidemic, he said, occurred because man repealed biblical anti-homosexual sex laws in the 1970s. "The proof is in the pudding," he was quoted as saying in a 1998 interview.

CALIFORNIA RECALL ELECTION: (LATimes) "Isolated at Home, McClintock Finds New Friends"

Despite calls from California Republicans for him to drop out of the governor's race, some say he has a future as a conservative leader.

By Daryl Kelley and Megan Garvey
Times Staff Writers

September 28, 2003

Even as more California conservative leaders publicly call on him to clear the way for Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Sen. Tom McClintock has gained a national following.

Little known outside the state until now, McClintock has struck a chord with the right wing of the Republican Party nationwide with his frank presentation of his point of view — anti-tax, anti-big government, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-illegal immigration, anti-gay marriage.

"Tom is one of us," said Richard A. Viguerie, who has founded dozens of conservative organizations over the last 40 years and pioneered direct-mail fund-raising for the Republican Party in the 1970s and '80s. "And it's so exciting to have someone who wants to be associated with us, who will walk with us, win or lose. I see Tom as being a major national conservative leader in the future."

McClintock is seizing the moment.

Largely abandoned by California Republican officials, who are openly worried that he will cost them the governorship, McClintock traveled late Friday to Colorado for a fund-raiser held by an elite group of national conservatives. He raised more than $100,000 for his underfunded campaign and gained the endorsement of leaders influential with a national conservative audience, according to his campaign staff.

Viguerie and others are helping him tap the pocketbooks of the group, which helped finance Ronald Reagan's political climb. Through his Virginia-based Conservative Headquarters, Viguerie said that he hopes to reach millions of conservatives nationwide on McClintock's behalf, using e-mail lists, his Web site and his ties to more than 100 organizations.

The effort is a last-minute rush to raise money and is boosted by McClintock's exposure in the national media, including televised debates and interviews. Already, his campaign advisors say, such appearances, particularly his performance in Wednesday's nationally televised debate, have brought in donations from across the country, even as he has taken increasingly sharp hits from California Republicans for staying in the race. In addition to Internet contributions that sometimes amount to tens of thousands of dollars daily, his aides say, he is receiving a constant stream of e-mails from around the country, urging him not to back down.

Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the conservative advocacy group Eagle Forum, said last week's debate brought McClintock to her attention. What she saw, she said, "was an authentic conservative" who deserved support.

"I don't agree with the approach of compromising our principles or staying quiet to win elections. I think we've seen tremendous victories in recent Senate elections of people who are openly pro-life," Schlafly said. "We don't see moderation, pragmatism, what we call RINO Republicans as the way to go." The abbreviation stands for Republicans in Name Only.

In some respects, McClintock's emergence on the national stage, aided by the interest in Schwarzenegger, is a throwback to a time when the most conservative Republicans regularly caused trouble for their party.

"He's the obstinate little man who is always popping up and throwing principle in their face," said Tucker Carlson, who represents the right on CNN's "Crossfire." What Republicans really don't like, he said, "is someone reminding them what they are supposed to stand for."

How far McClintock's principles will take him remains unknown. In the polls he is running third, behind fellow Republican Schwarzenegger and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante in the race to replace Gov. Gray Davis, should voters decide to remove the governor from office in the Oct. 7 special election.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who bankrolled the petition-gathering effort that landed the recall on the ballot, endorsed Schwarzenegger on Friday. Bill Simon Jr. did the same the day before. Both men had previously dropped out of the race so the Republican vote would not be split.

McClintock lags far behind other top candidates in fund-raising, reporting just $1.7 million in donations, nearly all in small contributions, compared with $18.6 million for Schwarzenegger and more than $10 million for Bustamante. McClintock has benefited, however, from about $2.83 million spent on his behalf by Indian tribes and conservative Christians.

After Wednesday night's debate, daily contributions via McClintock's Web site doubled to $40,000, coming from supporters in "12 states and one aircraft carrier," McClintock said.

His campaign staff has cast the surge in attention as a turning point. A McClintock victory, seen as a slim possibility by nearly all political observers, is still viewed as within reach by some of his prominent backers. Schwarzenegger, with his more liberal social positions, would be worse than a Democrat, they say.

If Schwarzenegger were running "as a Democrat, conservatives wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole," said James Dobson, founder of the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family and one of those in Colorado who endorsed McClintock on Friday. "The only reason for conservatives to vote for him would be because they're desperate for a win

"Everybody's saying McClintock can't win. If all of the conservatives who are complaining about him would vote for him, I believe he would pull it off," Dobson said.

Viguerie said Schwarzenegger "could wreak havoc on conservatives, like Pete Wilson did — go out and try to organize primary opposition against conservatives and try to put the conservative leaders out of business by withholding party money from them."

Among members of the Council for National Policy who were hosts at Friday's fund-raiser, a posh reception at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, were Irvine businessman Howard Ahmanson Jr.; Gary Bauer of the Washington think tank American Values, a political leader among religious conservatives; Lewis K. Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee; and Reed Larson, president of the National Right to Work Committee.

The private organization was founded in 1981 by a small group of Californians and Western multimillionaires who made up then-President Ronald Reagan's advisory "kitchen cabinet." Its president is Donald Hodel, who was Interior secretary under Reagan. About 500 council members attended Friday's fund-raiser. McClintock received a sustained standing ovation when he was introduced.

McClintock called the response "astonishing" and said he was seeking help from the conservative leaders because they share a fiscal and moral philosophy — and he needed the money.

Saturday, at a $50-a-plate fund-raiser at a La Cañada Flintridge home, where a country band played "Okie from Muskogee," McClintock said the rush of new donations would allow him to reach his $4-million campaign goal, adding, "All we have to do is get our message out. We don't have to outspend them."

Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman Sean Walsh downplayed McClintock's candidacy in a conference call with reporters Saturday. "I don't believe Mr. McClintock is in range or that he will be that significant in the election," Walsh said.

McClintock welcomed the comments, saying: "Well good, then they shouldn't be concerned about my continuing the race and now people are free to vote their conscience."

State Librarian Kevin Starr said: "McClintock's power is the power of a few clear ideas: pro-life and anti-gun control. Those are shocking statements given the overall political correctness of society. They will never make McClintock a majority candidate in California, but they will make him a decisive minority candidate."

"He's the Ralph Nader of the California Republican Party," Starr said.

Some political observers doubt McClintock can sustain a position on the national stage past Oct. 7.

Carlson, who called the desertion of McClintock by some California conservatives "nauseating," said nonetheless that he could never see the Republican National Committee throwing its support behind McClintock.

"The money people don't just have distaste, they have contempt for people who are out there wagging their finger and telling them they are wrong to abandon their principles in order to win elections," Carlson said.

Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former national Republican Party strategist, said he was not surprised by McClintock's appeal outside California or by the growing clamor within the state against him.

"California Republicans want to win. They're sick of losing. They think a 75% friend is better than a 100% enemy," Pitney said.

And Pitney said he doubted that McClintock, whose demeanor is more serious than charismatic, would emerge from an already crowded pack as a national conservative spokesman.

"On election day his carriage turns into a pumpkin," Pitney said.

John Feliz, McClintock's campaign director, thinks his boss has created a more lasting fan base.

"The very fact pressure is coming from the top and he's held out and held firm has created an incredibly new awareness of political leadership. We're getting e-mails by the hundreds and phone calls jamming us all day long, saying, 'Tom, you don't dare drop out of this race. You hang in there.' " Feliz said.

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Joe Mathews, Joel Rubin and Dan Morain contributed to this report.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

US millionaire bankrolls crusade against gay Anglican priests
America's religious right draws a line in the sand as Anglican primates meet in London

Jamie Doward

Sunday October 12, 2003

The Observer

Howard F. Ahmanson Jr does not like publicity. The fiftysomething multimillionaire, who lives in Newport Beach, California, is something of a recluse.

Calls to Ahmanson's multitude of companies and foundations requesting an interview go unreturned. Organisations which enjoy his largesse decline to talk about their benefactor.

What is known is that in the 1990s Ahmanson, whose family made a fortune in banking, subsidised a number of controversial right-wing causes. These include a magazine called the Chalcedon Report , which carried an article calling for gays to be stoned; a think-tank called the Claremont Institute which promoted a video in which Charlton Heston praises 'the God-fearing Caucasian middle class'; and a scientific body which rejects the theory of evolution.

Now Ahmanson has a new crusade, whose repercussions will be felt far beyond the United States. He is using his cash to stir up the most divisive row facing the Anglican Church, one that threatens to rip it apart when its leaders meet in London this week.

At its heart is the Church's stance on homosexuality, an issue that divides liberal and conservative. Somewhere in the middle is the Anglican Communion's spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Initial estimates suggest that the Communion's leaders are split down the middle, with some 20 of the 38 opposing two separate events that have occurred in North America.

The first was the decision to appoint the openly gay Canon Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. The second was the decision by the diocese of New Westminster in Canada to bless same-sex unions.

The conservative wing of the 70 million-strong Anglican Communion were outraged, arguing that the two events ran contrary to the teachings of the Bible and the Communion's position on homosexuality agreed at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 - while the Church should welcome practising homosexuals into its congregations, there could be no ordination.

Leading the backlash is the American Anglican Council (AAC) based in Washington. Until recently the AAC's chief executive officer, David C. Anderson, ran St James Church in Newport Beach, California, where Ahmanson is often to be found in the congregation. The AAC's vice-president, Bruce Chapman, is president of the Discovery Institute, on whose board Ahmanson sits and which publishes research insisting Darwin was wrong.

AAC stalwart James M. Stanton, Bishop of Dallas, admits that Ahmanson gives $200,000 a year, although many observers believe it is considerably more. An internal memo from the vice-president makes fascinating reading. 'Fundraising is a critical topic ... But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in setting it as the options clarify.'

The AAC's influence is bolstered by its close links to another right-wing religious organisation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), which operates out of the same Washington office as the AAC, and on whose board Ahmanson's wife, Roberta, sits.

Between 1997 and 2002, the IRD, set up during the Cold War to fight the spread of communism, spent at least $2.5 million to monitor and resist the liberalisation of America's churches.

Much of the IRD's money comes from the conservative philanthropist Richard Scaife, heir to a banking and oil fortune and owner of the Greensburgh Tribune Review, the Pittsburgh newspaper that became the bane of President Bill Clinton's life, with a series of allegations surrounding the Whitewater affair.

Now the two organisations are on the warpath. Last week they assembled their troops for a giant rally in Dallas in anticipation of this week's meeting of Anglican leaders in London. The chief target was the liberal baby boomer generation of the Sixties whose religious leaders were accused of betraying successive generations.

At the end the conservatives had drawn a line in the sand. A carefully worded series of resolutions calls on the Primates of the Anglican Communion to discipline those bishops in the Episcopal Church 'who have departed from biblical faith and order' and 'guide the realignment of Anglicanism in North America'.

The sentiment is repeated to differing degrees around the world. Archbishop Peter Akinola, leader of the 17.5 million-strong Anglican Church in Nigeria, threatened to split from the Communion over the appointment of the openly gay but celibate Canon Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading earlier this year. Amid the furore created by the conservatives, John stood down, prompting dismay among liberals.

The issue has now become as much about geography as sexuality. Canon Chris Sugden of the UK's Anglican Mainstream movement, which shares the AAC's concerns over homosexual clergy, said: 'The average Anglican comes from a poor culture, is under 30 and is black. For them the teachings of the Christian faith on issues such as the importance of the family have been a major source of help.

'Now they find some Christians in Western society are saying, "in our culture there's pressure such that we have to modify what the Church has understood for 2,000 years. If that will cause you trouble, we're sorry".'

To outsiders, the fact that the row within the Anglican Communion is being driven by tough-talking American conservatives with close links to ultra-right-wing millionaires might look unseemly. But those sympathetic to some of the AAC's opinions say this does not mean its views should be dismissed.

'These are Americans and it's the nature of their culture. The fact an organisation is bankrolled by wealthy individuals is not unique to the AAC or any other interest group. It's a case of a lot of pots and not many clean kettles,' said Dr Philip Giddings, one of those who successfully opposed the appointment of Canon John and who has friends within the AAC.

'I would expect to see a reaffirmation of the position of the Lambeth conference. That has been the overwhelming view of Anglicans. It would take unique circumstances for the Primates not to reaffirm it,' Giddings said.

This would represent a body blow to the liberal wing of the Communion and to many Anglicans in the UK, who are deeply dismayed at the signals this will send to wider society.

Richard Kirker, general-secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, said: 'Is it just coincidence that the Churches that are most resistant to the full inclusion of lesbian and gay people are also the least open and democratic?'

Not to mention wealthy.

One faith, two wings

TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION BACKED TOM McCLINTOCK IN RECALL ELECTION: "Poll Says GOP Race Getting Tighter; McClintock Aides Cheered by Gain"

Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 19:57:22 -40975532 (CST)

From: "Al Geiersbach"

TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION

The Tradition Values Coalition (TVC), founded in 1983, is an Anaheim, California-based organization led by the Rev. Louis P.Sheldon. Emphasizing a state and local grassroots approach, TVCworks to "educate and inform its member churches on legislativeaction relating to issues of pro-family concern. "

The group'sefforts have included extensive lobbying, publishing, andsupport for like-minded political candidates. As part of itscampaign, TVC has opposed church-state separation .Among other causes, TVC has advocated:--restoring organized prayer to public schools;--installing the teaching of creationism as part of sciencecurricula;--the repeal of civil rights protections for gays and lesbians;--"reparative therapy" for gays and lesbians.

Sheldon describes the "battle" against homosexuality as thecenterpiece of his program. He expresses his vision this way:"Don [Wildmon] has got pornography; Randy [Terry] has got abortion, Phyllis [Schlafly] and the Concerned Women for Americahave religious liberties; Jim [Dobson] has family values; the Christian Coalition does candidates: and I've got thehomosexuals."

LOU SHELDON: Sheldon, TVC's chairman and founder, was born in 1934 to an orthodox Jewish mother and a Protestant father. He became aChristian as a teenager. After attending Michigan StateUniversity and Princeton Theological Seminary, he served as apastor in various Presbyterian pulpits for 25 years.Since establishing TVC, Sheldon has been described by USAToday as "one of the most powerful men in California." He hasbeen dubbed "the California Falwell, but says, "Falwell fired around but where was the infantry to come in once the enemy washit? That's what I want to do is create an infantry of people[sic] "

TVC'S OPERATION: TVC has offices in Anaheim and Sacramento, and in Colorado,Nebraska and Washington, D.C. Sheldon's son Steve is thegroup's executive director; daughter Andrea is TVC'sWashington-based Director of Government Affairs. The groupclaims active chapters in approximately 20 states andaffiliation with 25,000 churches, including 6,500 in California.It issues two regular publications: a bi-monthly newsletter,_Traditional Values Report_, and a church periodical, _ActionAlert_.TVC also distributes several books and videos, including the35-minute video, "Gay Rights/Special Rights: Inside theHomosexual Agenda"; education activist David Harmer's book_School Choice: Why We Need It/How We Get It_; and the video,"The Big Lie," billed as an "expose of the falsehood behind thephrase 'Separation of Church and State.'" Additionally, Sheldonhas appeared with David Barton at an August 1993 conferencesponsored by the Traditional Values Coalition of Oregon. {NOTE:as of Nov 1994, he has been in Milwaukee, WI, once for a rally,and is reportedly coming back in Nov '94 for a "summit" meetingwith many other national leaders, presumably to plan a campaignto revoke Wisconsin's protection of civil rights for gays andlesbians.}

TVC AFFILIATES: TVC is a non-profit, 501(c) (4) enterprise with severalaffiliated organizations that are largely active in California.These include Traditional Values Lobby (also known as CaliforniaEducators for Traditional Values), the American LibertiesInstitute ("a research organization that traces the developmentof biblical concepts pertaining to the founding of the UnitedStates and the Constitution") -- which does business as theCalifornia Coalition for Traditional Values -- and CaliforniaBusiness for Traditional Values. According to the Institute forFirst Amendment Studies, TVC has also established a NationalTask Force for the Preservation of the Heterosexual Ethic inAmerica.At least two complaints have been filed with the InternalRevenue Service alleging that Sheldon's organizations areviolating tax laws by channeling tax-deductible contributionsinto political activities, according to the _Sacramento News &Review_. The IRS has refused to comment on the allegations. In1991, TVC was fined $2,000 by the California Fair PoliticalPractices Commission for improperly giving money to an anti-gaygroup that was attempting to defeat a 1990 "domestic partners"proposition in San Francisco.

FIGHTING GAYS: Sheldon's campaign against homosexuality has demonstratedlittle restraint or civility. He has called homosexuality "themost pernicious evil today. We must stop it before it spreadsthroughout the nation like a cancer." On another occasion, hestated, "Gays and lesbians live perverted, twisted lives thatfeed upon the Unsuspecting and the innocent, like our children.""They Want Your Children," reads an April 1991 fundraisingletter.Sheldon's early forays in his battle against gays and lesbiansincluded a campaign to prohibit gay teachers from the classroom.In 1986, he reportedly supported an anti-gay initiative draftedby followers of conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche that couldhave led to the isolation or quarantining of people with AIDS.In 1989, the TVC leader helped effect the repeal of gay andlesbian rights ordinances in Concord and Irvine California. In1989 and 1990, he convened anti-gay conferences in Californiaand Washington, featuring such homophobic speakers asthen-Congressman William Dannemeyer and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, apsychiatrist who claims to "cure" homosexuality.Sheldon elicited significant attention in his 1991 fightagainst Assembly Bill 101, a California bill that would haveintroduced the phrase "sexual orientation" into California'scivil rights laws. Most observers agree that Sheldon and TVCwere instrumental in convincing Gov. Pete Wilson to veto thebill.TVC is currently organizing anti-gay rights initiatives inCalifornia and Arizona. Sheldon's influence appears to begrowing (he participated in meetings between top religious rightleaders and President Bush for instance), as is opposition tohis efforts -- particularly among gay and lesbian activists andtheir supporters in California. At a September 1993 Sheldonaddress to a San Francisco church, protesters vandalized churchproperty and pelted congregants with rocks and eggs.

CALIFORNIA POLITICS: TVC is part of the informal but potent coalition of religiousright groups active in California politics: these groups includethe Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Womenfor America, Operation Rescue, and Citizens for Excellence inEducation. TVC and its compatriots suffered a setback whenProposition 174, a private school voucher referendum they hadvigorously backed, was defeated by a 70-30 margin in theNovember 1993 election. However, religious right activists andsympathizers control nearly 40 of the 58 GOP county centralcommittees, and have elected hundreds of "pro-family"candidates, mostly to local offices and the state legislature.Sheldon's efforts in this regard includes the disseminationof California voter guides. A 1986 guide, published by TVC frontCalifornia Coalition for Traditional Values and distributed inconjunction with Citizens for Excellence in Education,advertised seminars featuring R.J. Rushdoony.More generally, Sheldon has brought to the public arena atough-talking, absolutist rhetoric. "We were here first. Youdon't take our shared common values and say they are biased andbigoted," he says. "We are the keepers of what is right and whatis wrong."

NOTES: Bruce Mirken's "God's Right-Hand Man" in the December5, 1991, _Sacramento News & Review_ remains the best startingplace.

The _San Francisco Chronicle_ published a three-partseries on the religious right from September 13-15, 1993, thefirst part of which featured Sheldon. _The Public Eye_ (March1993) noted Sheldon's support for a Lyndon LaRouche anti-gayproposal, and the Coalition for Human Dignity's _The DignityReport_ has tracked TVC and its spin-offs in the northwest.

Ed Foster's "Group urges banning laws that protect gays" inPhoenix's _Arizona Republic_ of December 23, 1993, depicts TVC'sinitiative in that state. Sheldon's bimonthly _TraditionalValues Report_ is helpful in its coverage of the group'slobbying efforts. P

Project Tocsin provided information regarding Sheldon.-- from _The Religious Right: The Assault On Tolerance &Pluralism In America_, A Publication of the Anti-DefamationLeague, 1994, second printing.

News Release

News Release April 25, 2001
CONTACT:
Amber Khan at 202-639-6370 ext.103 / Pager 888-941-9614

?Today?s invitation-only Republican Faith-Based Summit looks like the manipulation of religion for partisan political gain? Will funding only go to a favored few?? -- Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy

(WASHINGTON – April 25, 2001) The Interfaith Alliance Executive Director the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy released the following statement regarding the House-Senate Majority Faith-Based Summit.

Today?s invitation-only Republican Faith-Based Summit looks like the manipulation of religion for partisan political gain. The blatant exclusion of faith leaders who represent the theological diversity and vast breadth of the religious community stands in stark contrast to President Bush?s rhetoric of inclusion and respect for all religions.
Is this a signal of what?s to come if the Charitable Choice legislation is expanded? Will funding only go to a favored few? Efforts to expand Charitable Choice would fundamentally put power into the hands of political appointees to pick and choose which religious groups to fund. This event demands that we ask if the invitation list at today?s summit portends a similar fate when government dollars are dispensed to a handful of competing religious groups.

Will access be afforded only to those religious leaders who have been anointed by the Republican leadership and their agenda. The religious right?s stronghold on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is clear – when Reggie White and Rev. Lou Sheldon are vetting invitees, it is no wonder that communities who disagree with their political ideology are being excluded.

Yesterday, The Interfaith Alliance joined 850 religious leaders (http://www.interfaithalliance.org/Newsroom/press/2001/010424.htm) from across the nation in calling upon President Bush and members of Congress to reject any legislation that opens the door for government-funded religious discrimination, undermines the fundamental religious rights of the most vulnerable, fosters unhealthy competition and division between religious groups, and sacrifices the very integrity and freedom that allows both the followers and the institutions of religion to practice and keep faith in our nation.

To view the petition and statement, visit www.interfaithalliance.org/Initiatives.clergy_ltr.html.

To educate religious leaders on the issue of government funding ministries, The Interfaith Alliance Foundation has sent an educational guide, Keeping the Faith: The Promise of Cooperation, The Perils of Government Funding (http://www.interfaithalliance.org/Initiatives/ktf.pdf), to more than 25,000 religious and faith-based community leaders seeking information about the promises and pitfalls of accepting government contracts.

To view the document, visit: www.interfaithalliance.org/Initiatives/ktf.pdf.

Outside of Washington, DC, The Interfaith Alliance is organizing grassroots forums with religious and civic leaders to address the implications of the president?s plan to expand Charitable Choice. Upcoming events are being held in several states, including Colorado, Oklahoma and Michigan.

###

Founded in 1994, The Interfaith Alliance (TIA) is a non-partisan clergy-led grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the positive and healing role of religion in the life of the nation and challenging those who manipulate religion to promote intolerance. With more than 130,000 members drawn from over 50 faith traditions, clergy-led local Alliances in 38 states, and a national network of activists in every state, TIA promotes civility, mutual respect, and cooperation in our increasingly diverse society.

April 19, 2001

Watts Advisory Committee Appointees Under Fire for Discriminatory Remarks

Baldwin, Frank Request Replacement of Ministers for 'Fierce' Attacks on Homosexuals

By Ben Pershing

The House's two openly gay Democratic lawmakers have asked GOP Conference Chairman J.C. Watts (Okla.) to "reconsider" his decision to include two ministers who have made controversial remarks about homosexuals on an advisory committee for the upcoming House-Senate Majority Faith-Based Summit.Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) wrote to Watts on Monday to protest the Oklahoman's choice of the Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, and former NFL star Reggie White as participants in the summit, which is scheduled for April 24 and 25 and is designed to help advance President Bush's plan for "faith-based" initiatives."The inclusion of people who have been so fierce in their attacks on others because of their sexual orientation will add to the divisiveness that now surrounds the issue of faith-based initiatives," the lawmakers wrote. In an interview yesterday, Baldwin said one of the chief issues that should be addressed by the summit is "the prospect of religious institutions discriminating against potential employees or potential clients who hold different religious beliefs or are gay or lesbian.""These appointments are a step in the wrong direction of bringing people together," Baldwin said.As the founder of the TVC, Sheldon has long fought against what he has called "militant homosexuals" and "pro-homosexual legislative madness." Sheldon is close to the House GOP leadership, and the TVC's Web site includes a complimentary quote from Watts.White, an ordained minister, sparked controversy with a speech he made in 1998 to the Wisconsin Assembly."Homosexuality is a decision," White said in his address. "It's not a race. And when you look at it, people from all different ethnic backgrounds are living this lifestyle, but people from all different ethnic backgrounds are also liars and cheaters and malicious and backstabbers."Watts' office emphasized that the summit's purpose is to bring together people with a variety of viewpoints."This is a non-denominational gathering of people of different races, creeds, colors and political ideologies, and we would encourage people to follow the [advisory] committee's example and put their differences aside to join with us in working together to find solutions to help the poor and the needy," said Watts spokeswoman Christine Iverson.Although there is currently no one from the gay community on the committee, which includes about 30 religious leaders, Iverson pointed out that "Everyone with a belief in something bigger than themselves and a good idea is welcome at the table."It's also possible that the committee will eventually include someone from the Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay and lesbian GOP group."We have been in touch with people driving this both on the Hill and the administration," said LCR spokesman Kevin Ivers.One subplot to the larger issue is the continuing feud between Frank and the Log Cabin Republicans. Frank and Baldwin also wrote a letter to the group's executive director, Rich Tafel, inviting him to join in their condemnation of Watts' decision, though Frank isn't holding his breath."Politically speaking [the LCR is] such a cheap date they can't say no to the administration," said Frank spokesman Daniel McGlinchey.LCR's Ivers pointed out that Frank released the letters to the media immediately and suggested that the Massachusetts lawmaker is more interested in publicity than in achieving some kind of compromise."As far as Barney is concerned, this is just sort of politics by press release as usual," said Ivers.