Adele M. Stan: Religious Right's Field Test for Beating Obama.

A mere 10 days since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefish survived the recall election launched against them by state's liberal coalition, Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is ebullient as he takes the stage at his organization's Washington, DC gala on the final night of FFC's national conference at the Renaissance Hotel. Reed has good reason to be happy. His return to the religious right spotlight is a turn of events that few would have bet on. Since he first burst on the political scene in the 1990s as the "Wunderkind" executive director of Rev. Pat Robertson's "Christian Coalition", Reed's political trajectory took him so close to the sun that his wings nearly melted. When George W Bush signed him as a strategist for the 2000 presidential campaign, Reed's career soared, only to crash four years later with revelations of his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Along the way, he made a lot of money, and is reported to live with his wife and two of his four children in a house in Duluth Georgia, worth $2.2 million. The boyish contours of his face, now marked with the occasional line, Reed, at 51, still conveys a youthful vigor, fit and trim in a well tailored dark suit, with his full head of hair brushed neatly back to display a smooth forehead. Taking no small measure of credit for the triumph of Walker and Kleefish, Reed boasts of the 600,000 voter contacts he says his organization made to get conservative Wisconsinites to the polls on June 5. Later that evening, Reed will present to Kleefish, who is billed as Wisconsin's answer to Sarah Palin, FFC's Courage in Leadership Award.