Ralph Reed

Ralph Reed founded the Faith & Freedom Coalition in 2009 and has led it since, building it into one of the most effective evangelical Christian voter mobilization organizations in American politics — the spiritual successor to the Christian Coalition he founded in 1989, which became the most powerful religious political organization of the 1990s and helped deliver Congress to Republicans in 1994. Born June 24, 1961, in Portsmouth, Virginia, Reed earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and his PhD in American history from Emory University. His career has been in the organized deployment of evangelical Christian voters in Republican electoral politics, a vocation in which he has few peers.

Reed has been a sustained pro-Israel voice in evangelical and Republican political circles, attending CUFI summits, speaking at pro-Israel forums, and making the case to his evangelical audiences that political support for Israel is a civic obligation rooted in biblical teaching and American strategic interest. His political intelligence about evangelical voter priorities has been deployed to ensure that candidates who seek evangelical support understand that weakening on Israel carries costs with that constituency. His Georgia political network — Georgia having become a critical presidential and Senate battleground — gives his endorsements and mobilization activities outsized national electoral significance.

The Faith & Freedom Coalition's annual "Road to Majority" conference has become one of the premier events for Republican presidential and congressional candidates, and Reed has consistently ensured that Israel-related questions are part of the vetting process candidates face in that forum. At Rank 69, Reed is the evangelical political strategist whose organizational capability to mobilize millions of Christian voters has made pro-Israel support a structural prerequisite for Republican electoral viability — not merely a rhetorical preference but an enforceable constituency demand.