McDonnell aide's past links with group raise questions

An episode from the political history of the man running Bob McDonnell's campaign for governor is raising concerns among some Republicans that he may hurt the GOP's chances of ending an eight-year Democratic hold on the governor's mansion.

McDonnell's campaign manager, Philip Cox, had a key role in a political advocacy group that put out a last-minute mailing during a 2000 congressional campaign attacking a candidate for not paying taxes.

The same group, known as the Faith and Family Alliance, also served as a funding conduit between evangelical leader Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist later sent to prison on multiple fraud charges.

Cox's ties to the group have been previously reported, including in a 2005 Washington Post story five days before McDonnell was elected attorney general. Now, activists across the political spectrum are raising questions about Cox's involvement with the alliance for different reasons.

Democrats are eager to create doubts about McDonnell's team in hopes of tainting the candidate. Two Republicans - who admit they have clashed with Cox in the past - say they want to inoculate McDonnell from this kind of attack later in the election season by getting the story out now. None of Cox's critics was willing to be identified.

Cox has never been charged with any wrongdoing related to the alliance.

Nonetheless, the controversy "sets the table for the Democrats to go after McDonnell," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

In his campaign for governor, McDonnell is positioning himself as a moderate Republican.

"One of the underlying concerns that many thoughtful Virginians have about McDonnell are his ties to the Christian right," Sabato said. "I can't tell you how many times senior people have asked, 'Who will Bob McDonnell appoint to the 4,000 appointments he gets?' 'Who will run the college boards of visitors and the state agencies?'

"The reasons these questions matter to the people asking them is they fear it will be the far right and the Christian conservatives," he said.

"I can guarantee you whoever the Democratic nominee is, that's going to be one of his major lines of attack: McDonnell is tied to the far Christian right and he will disproportionately make his appointments from that group. And that's not where Virginia is anymore. That will send the key independent and swing voters to the Democrats."

Incorporated in February 2000, Faith and Family Alliance was a "527 group," named for the tax-law loophole that allows such organizations to conduct political activities while avoiding limits on campaign contributions. Its stated purpose was to speak out for traditional religious values during the fall presidential campaign, according to several people active in the group, but that never happened.

Cox was one of the group's four initial directors and served for a time as its executive director, according to state corporate records.

That year, Cox also served as campaign manager for state Sen. Stephen Martin in a hotly contested race with then-Del. Eric Cantor for the Republican nomination for the Richmond-area 7th District seat in Congress.

Cantor was the establishment candidate with the blessing of the retiring congressman. Martin was the insurgent candidate with strong backing from religious conservatives.

Days before the June 13 primary, the Faith and Family Alliance sent out a mailing to 40,000 households claiming that Cantor had failed to pay his taxes. The taxes in question were owed by a business partnership involving Cantor and others.

Cantor prevailed in the primary by a scant 263 votes. He went on to an easy win in the general election and is now Republican whip, the second-ranking member of the GOP House leadership.

Cox is adamant that he had nothing to do with the mail piece and had left the alliance in April 2000, before it was sent. In support of that contention, Cox provided an April 3 resignation letter. Any claims that he jointly worked for Martin and the alliance are "flatly untrue," he said.

Yet Martin, R-Chesterfield, said that Cox and a colleague presented the mail piece idea to him shortly before the June primary. He said he rejected their suggestion that his campaign send it out. The Friday before the primary, Martin wrote recently on a political blog, Cox called to tell him that the mail piece had been sent.

Other state corporation records show that Cox's name was listed as an alliance board member into June. Cox says those state records weren't updated in a timely fashion to reflect his departure.

Groups such as the alliance are not supposed to coordinate their activities with political campaigns.

Although federal election rules were being revised at the time, one election law expert said the links between the Faith and Family Alliance and Martin's campaign likely would have been a violation.

The problem is that enforcement of such laws at the time was inconsistent, added Scott E. Thomas, a Washington attorney who served on the Federal Election Commission from 1986 to 2006.

The mailing about Cantor prompted two of the alliance's board members to tender their resignations - one of them labeled it a "hit piece."

Cox blames the current attacks on hard feelings created by Republican battles past and present. He called such attacks "the politics of personal destruction."

He does not dispute that he spoke with Martin about the mail piece, but he said he did so in his role as campaign manager, not on behalf of the alliance.

Martin's account dovetails with the recollection of Robin Vanderwall, who succeeded Cox as the alliance's executive director.

"Phil had made all the arrangements for that mailing," said Vanderwall, who also ran McDonnell's successful 1999 campaign for the House of Delegates.

Vanderwall contends that Cox continued to lead the group even after Vanderwall took over and after its corporate papers were updated in June 2000.

"The whole idea was to create the impression that he had left the organization sooner than he did," Vanderwall explained.

As evidence, Vanderwall produced phone bills for the group that were still being sent to Cox at a Richmond post office box as late as August 2000.

During that same period, Vanderwall turned to McDonnell, then an attorney in the Virginia Beach firm Huff, Poole & Mahoney, to handle some legal paperwork for the alliance.

Vanderwall produced a June 10, 2000, letter from McDonnell thanking him for the business, quoting hourly rates and explaining that the alliance would be billed monthly. McDonnell soon turned the work over to Albert Poole, another lawyer in the firm, Vanderwall said.

McDonnell did not know anything about the alliance's operations, according to a spokesman.

Vanderwall recently was released from prison after serving six years for soliciting sex with a minor over the Internet. After he was arrested, he asked McDonnell to intercede on his behalf but McDonnell declined - a fact that the McDonnell supporters cite to cast doubt on Vanderwall's credibility.

Although some details about the alliance are scarce - state and federal election officials found no traces of the group in their records - it did at least one other thing before fading away in 2001.

Abramoff used it to funnel a $150,000 payment from eLottery Inc., an online gambling services company, to an Atlanta consulting firm run by Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, according to a Senate investigation of Abramoff.

Once again, Vanderwall said, the aim was deception.

Abramoff, who had been hired by eLottery to fight a pending bill in Congress to outlaw Internet gambling, wanted to disguise the source of the money he was sending to his old friend Reed.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January 2006 to defrauding American Indian tribes in connection with his lobbying work on gambling issues.

McDonnell calls Cox "a fine campaign manager" and dismissed the affair as "ancient history" and "a distraction from the issues" in the current campaign.

Pat Mullins, the recently appointed chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, was one of the alliance board members who resigned after the Cantor mailing appeared.

In a June 17, 2000, letter to Vanderwall, Mullins wrote that he had learned of the Cantor mailing and realized the alliance "was not really an advocacy group as I had been told but, in fact, was a political organization which had just sent out a 'hit' piece."

When reached recently, Mullins and other alliance board members said their memories about the group are hazy. There was no consensus among them about who ran it, and several said they can't recall the alliance ever holding so much as a conference call.

Mullins became state GOP chairman this spring with help from McDonnell and Cox.

And Cantor has endorsed McDonnell for governor. In December, he gave $10,000 to McDonnell's campaign.