Republican Gomorrah

by Max Blumenthal

  Reflecting on the movement he left, Schaeffer saw its greatest danger in the tendency of its leaders to celebrate cultural decline. “We thrived on bad news, we thanked God that education was falling apart and teen pregnancy was going up,” he recalled. “We couldn’t peddle solutions unless there was a crisis. We were in business the same way an oncologist was—if there was no cancer he’d be out of business. Quite simply, we were trying to manufacture crisis.”

  Having watched the movement take his father’s post-Roe polemics to their logical conclusion—domestic terrorism—Frank Schaeffer believes his father would recant them if he had lived long enough. “My dad had become someone who unleashed something where people were being killed,” Frank told me. “He would have come to a time where he basically said, ‘I’m sorry I did this and I think I was wrong to do that.’ And I base that on his earlier, much more compassionate work. He was such a friend and counselor to so many people. What happened is so insane. It is such a tragedy.”

  But Schaeffer never saw the growth of the seeds of destruction he had sown. In his wake, movement leaders proclaimed him their godfather, while Rushdoony’s tracts remained tucked away on their bookshelves. Indeed, Rushdoony was still very much alive, operating out of Chalcedon, a Reconstructionist foundation in northern California that Newsweek dubbed “the think-tank of the Christian right.” The radical cleric reaped the fruits of his budding friendship with Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a reclusive trust fund baby who had spent the late 1960s in a mental institution and emerged as a devoted follower of Reconstructionism.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHAT GOD WANTS HIM TO DO

  For more than three decades, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. has been one of the major financial angels of the right. “Intelligent design,” the schism in the Episcopal Church, state initiatives against gay marriage, George W. Bush’s theme of “compassionate conservatism”—Ahmanson has been behind them all. Yet few Americans have heard of him, and that’s the way he likes it. He 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, because his fear of speaking leads him to shun the media. And while a Daddy Warbucks of the right like Richard Mellon Scaife travels the world in his own jet, Ahmanson shuns luxury for a lifestyle of down-to-earth humility. As his wife, 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 forty-five minutes south of Los Angeles, he drives a Prius. 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.

  When Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. was born in 1950, his father, then forty-four years old, was entertaining visiting kings and queens and basking in the opulence of his mansion on Harbor Island, an exclusive address in southern California’s Newport Harbor. Junior was tended by an army of servants and ferried to and from school in a limousine. Watching the world glide by through darkened windows, he was gripped with a longing to cast off his wealth and disappear into anonymity. He burned with resentment toward his father, a remote, towering presence referred to by friends and foes alike as “Emperor” Ahmanson. While Ahmanson Sr. showered local institutions in the Los Angeles area with charitable gifts, his son was starved for attention.

  “Emperor” Ahmanson had been born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he had founded an insurance and savings and loan association, H. F. Ahmanson & Company, during the Depression. He used that nest egg to make his fortune financing California’s postwar housing boom. H. F. Ahmanson & Company became Home Savings & Loan and more recently was known as Washington Mutual until it was placed in receivership by the FDIC in late September 2008. In his later years, Ahmanson spent as much as 60 percent of his money on philanthropy. His name is emblazoned on a cardiology center at UCLA’s Medical Center, on a wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and on one of Los Angeles’s leading theaters. His son was raised to continue his philanthropic legacy.

  But the Emperor’s succession plans began to erode when the young prince turned ten and his beloved mother served his father with divorce papers. Howard Sr. remarried, choosing Caroline Leonetti, a close friend of President Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan, who was renowned for her cosmopolitan flair and support of the arts. Steve Clemons, the openly gay director of the New America Foundation, a left-leaning foreign policy think tank, recalled chauffeuring Leonetti from local galas to her swank Beverly Hills penthouses. Meanwhile, Howard Jr.’s mother died a few years after her divorce, in the late 1960s.

  When Howard was eighteen his father died, too, sinking him into depths of despair. With his $300 million inheritance, he was now California’s—and perhaps America’s—richest teenager. But he was without direction, afraid, and utterly alone. The tics, twitches, and uncontrollable verbal spasms caused by his Tourette’s syndrome worsened. He could not cope with his emotions, and during increasingly stressful episodes he would uncontrollably blurt out shocking statements. Unable to look people in the eye when he spoke to them, he became socially paralyzed. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he spent two years at the Menninger Clinic, a Topeka, Kansas, psychiatric institution. “I resented my family background,” he told the Orange County Register in 1985. “[My father] could never be a role model, whether by habits or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted.”

  Ahmanson’s physical and psychological problems worsened upon his return. While backpacking through Europe and “being grungy,” as he later explained, he developed a near-crippling case of arthritis, which forced him to return to Los Angeles for urgent medical care. Once he recovered, he imposed a strict $1,200-a-month allowance on himself, drove around town in a battered truck, and lived in cheap flophouses. Racked with guilt and self-loathing, he seemed destined for self-destruction.

  Ahmanson enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, majoring in economics and receiving poor grades. His downward spiral began to reverse, however, when he suddenly accepted the invitation of some college buddies to attend fundamentalist church services in Pasadena, California. 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, an evangelical 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.” His friends introduced him to a politicized brand of Christianity that was growing popular in evangelical circles. Soon Ahmanson discovered the writings of R. J. Rushdoony, which struck a deep chord, particularly The Politics of Guilt and Pity, in which the theologian mocked wealthy liberals. “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,” Rushdoony wrote. Ahmanson read avidly, as though Rushdoony were describing his own life.

  Still, Ahmanson did not yet convert to Reconstructionist theology, and he gave no indication that he shared Rushdoony’s racism. But through Rushdoony’s scathing critique of “the guilty rich,” he began to release himself from the burden of responsibility to carry on his father’s legacy. He promptly sold his stock in his father’s company and invested it in lucrative real estate acquisitions, with the goal of earning returns of 20 to 25 percent per year. That ensured that his wealth would grow quickly, but it also made him vulnerable to people who manipulated his residual guilt complex to get a cut of his fortune. These exploiters were often those closest to him. One former college roommate asked Ahmanson 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. Almost immed
iately (in that very hour, according to his wife), Ahmanson became a full-fledged Calvinist, embracing Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, which holds that God “elects” individuals for salvation on the basis of factors beyond their control.

  “If someone’s eternal goal is dependent on him [Ahmanson] giving a grant, then we’re all in trouble,” Roberta Green Ahmanson explained. “So that made Calvin’s approach that God is in charge of all of this quite appealing.”

  After his awakening, the sensitive scion discovered a new father figure: Rushdoony. Rushdoony reveled in his discovery of a financial angel willing to fund the growth of his think tank, Chalcedon, while expanding the influence of Reconstructionist philosophy. He rewarded Ahmanson’s generosity by giving him a seat on Chalcedon’s board of directors, a gesture of acceptance. Ahmanson was profoundly grateful. At last, in Rushdoony, he had found the attentive and approving father he had yearned for his whole life.

  “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,” Roberta Green Ahmanson told me.

  When Roberta Green Ahmanson joined the Orange County Register as its religion reporter, she was practically living in Ahmanson’s shadow. But her path to Orange County’s nascent Christian right contrasted sharply with his. As the daughter of fundamentalist Baptists from the hard-bitten railroad town of Perry, Iowa, she was raised on her parents’ Depression era values. Austerity and piety were the orders of the day. During high school, Green was forbidden from partaking in the teen rituals of her classmates; dancing and movies were strictly off-limits. She later described herself as “big and ugly,” “scared of people,” and profoundly lonely. But Green found an outlet in the well-worn Bible she carried everywhere and, later, in journalism devoted to religious coverage.

  After graduating from Calvin College, a conservative Christian school in Iowa, Green moved to Orange County, where she joined the Register. Working on an assignment about the Christian right, she became acquainted with Rushdoony. His plan for governing the country according to biblical law appealed to her, and she soon turned her attention to Rushdoony’s silent, thirty-something financial backer. Upon learning that she and Howard shared many of the same friends, she inquired about his availability.

  Their first date nearly ended in disaster. As Howard drove Roberta home in his convertible with the top down, his body began jerking around wildly. Warned that her date was eccentric, Roberta struggled to control what she thought was an epileptic seizure. But Howard wasn’t epileptic. When his spasms finally subsided, he turned to Roberta and explained, “I believe a bird has just crapped on me.” His odd joke provoked her laughter, dispelling the uncomfortable silence that had filled most of the evening.

  The two spent their next date discussing the authors they both enjoyed, from Francis Schaeffer and Rushdoony to Christian novelists such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. When Howard poured out his painful personal history in a series of revelations that he worried might repel her, Roberta drew closer. They soon felt they were soul-mates: cerebral but taciturn, image-conscious but socially hapless, in the world but not of it. Howard and Roberta married on January 25, 1986, the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul, and thus became one of America’s new Reconstructionist power couples.

  I first met the Ahmansons in 2004, when they agreed to an interview request I had recorded on the answering machine of Fieldstead and Co., Ahmanson’s unincorporated, unlisted business entity. The Ahmansons’ exchanges with me marked the first time since 1985 that Howard had agreed to make contact with a journalist, and the first time since 1992 for Roberta. Howard agreed to answer questions only by e-mail because, according to Roberta, his Tourette’s syndrome made chatting on the phone with a stranger nearly impossible. He functions “like a slow modem,” she said. Her dual role as her husband’s spokesperson and nurse quickly became apparent.

  For her part, Roberta was personable and even chatty during the course of three lengthy phone conversations. Although she attempted to deceive me on one occasion, telling me that Howard went to junior college in Kansas during the time when he had been committed to a mental institution, she was otherwise forthcoming. She disclosed that Howard maintained a vigil at Rushdoony’s bedside when he died in 2002 and that her husband identifies with Frodo, the Hobbit protagonist of Tolkien’s novels who must destroy a magical ring in order to save the world.

  Roberta was not reticent about her political views. When I asked her whether she favored biblical law as a governing model for the United States, for example, she casually responded, “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 Ten Commandments, you know, yeah.”

  Her remark was a barely qualified reprise of her husband’s stunning proclamation to the Orange County Register in 1985: “My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.” That statement highlighted Ahmanson’s entrance into the political arena. By leveraging his financial muscle into political influence, Ahmanson’s theocracy-based philanthropy has made possible some of the most pivotal right-wing campaigns in recent history. Yet Ahmanson has remained in the shadows, deploying surrogates and highly disciplined John Birch Society- style political cell groups to do his bidding and then wiping the scene clean of his fingerprints when their work is done.

  CHAPTER 4

  MARCHING THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS

  In 1992, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. initiated a string of stealth political successes, banding together with four right-wing businessmen to back the campaigns of anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-big-business candidates for the California Assembly. Two years later, the cabal of secret funders scored a major victory, propelling the Republican Party’s takeover of the California Assembly. With $3 million funneled through seven right-wing political action fronts, Ahmanson and his cohorts captured a startling twenty-five of the GOP’s thirty-nine legislative seats for their candidates. Their push ushered two important movement cadres into office: 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 Garcia Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

  Upon his election, McClintock sponsored a bill that restored the death penalty to California. In 2003, he and Haynes were instrumental in organizing the campaign to recall Democratic Governor Gray Davis. Haynes personally convinced a fellow archconservative, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, to bankroll the recall ballot qualification. After the measure qualified with the help of $1.7 million from Issa, McClintock entered the recall campaign as a candidate for governor, ultimately finishing third. As in the 1992 campaigns he backed, Ahmanson provided the money and personnel for McClintock’s campaign: John Stoos, an avowed Reconstructionist associated with Chalcedon, served as his deputy campaign manager, while Ahmanson hosted James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, and other key movement leaders for a Colorado fundraiser in September that raised $100,000 for their handpicked candidate.

  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 through a $350,000 donation to Proposition 209. That same year he helped ban gay marriage with a donation of $210,000—35 percent of its total funds—to Proposition 22. Though the anti-gay initiative was later overturned by California’s Supreme Court, the Ahmanson-supported cause became a national model for similar statewide initiatives put on the ballots of swing states as President Bush ran for reelection in 2004. It also created fodder for the movement’s next crusade in California, a ballot measure to ban gay marri
age once and for all in 2008.

  Ahmanson has been especially generous with those who share his experience of coming to Jesus—and culture war politics—through the pain of personal crisis. Among his grant recipients is Donna Rice-Hughes, the woman who brought down Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign after tabloids published photographs of her perched on the candidate’s lap while carousing on his yacht, “Monkey Business.” In the wake of the sex scandal, Rice-Hughes (then known only by her birth name, Rice) became born-again, joining the anti-pornography group Enough Is Enough! as its vice president in 1994. “Through ‘Enough Is Enough!’ God is using what I’ve learned to impact others’ lives and bring him glory,” she told Christianity Today magazine in 1996. “He’s brought purpose to my pain.” Rice-Hughes’s activism attracted Ahmanson’s attention, and in 1997, he gave $160,000 to her group, helping it develop into one of the country’s most muscular anti-porn lobbies. Seven years later, Rice-Hughes successfully pressed Congress to mandate Web filters in public library computers, an important victory against civil libertarians and advocates of free speech.