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The Clinical Advantage dation’ s budget, according to its director, Martha Breeden. A few years ago, Leininger also donated office space for the center at his property at 8122 Datapoint which also houses the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Texas Justice Foundation, and CEO. Today the pregnancy center is on Fredericksburg Road in yet another Young women who visit are urged to have their babies; they are plied with literature claiming that abortion is murder and an act that will cause them serious emotional illness. Pro-life Foundation director Breedon also made special use of the group’s mailing list last year: she sent material to 1,200 people encouraging them to push City Council to defund the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center because of Esperanza’s support for gay and lesbian art. Leininger and his family have also given more than $125,000 to the Heidi Group, the organization that distributes the “prayer calendars.” In San Antonio, the local Heidi Group affiliate is known as The Jericho Project. Members of this organization regularly picket abortion clinics. The Leiningers have also given to Jericho. Leininger’s anti-choice politics are no surprise if one looks at many of his other allegiances. As early as 1988, according to Federal Election Commission records, his wife Cecelia was contributing money to the presidential bid of Pat Robertson. The same year, Cecelia and James both gave money to the senatorial campaign of Wes Gilbreath, a Houston businessman and Christian Coalition activist. Indeed, by the nineties, Leininger was in thrall to ChristianCoalition-style enthusiasm. In some ways his passion echoed the Leininger family’s age-old fundamentalism. For example, at one of James’ businesses, Promised Land Dairies, manager Randy Boone himself devoutly religious remembers that he and his boss used to hold prayer meetings when Leininger visited to check on his herd of Jersey cows. On the other hand, Christian fundamentalism these days is about far more than prayer. In response to the civil rights and gender upheavals of the 1960s, Christian televangelists such as Pat Robertson began teaming up with politicians and corporate magnates such as Joseph Coors to meld a social conservative movement known as the New Right. By the time Leininger had his born-again experience, many in the New Right were espousing “Reconstructionism” a theory holding that Jesus Christ cannot make His Second Coming until society’s secular conventions are replaced by the precepts of the Bible. According to the theory, taking over secular institutions is slow, methodical work. It takes a lot of organization and a lot of money. Reconstructionism sounds like the perfect job for a businessman. Not long after he founded Texans for Justice, Leininger created two new PACs: Texans For Governmental Integrity, and A+Plus PAC for Parental School Choice, to channel more money to judicial races and the school voucher movement. Elections were coming up for the Texas State Board of Education, which meets several times a year to adopt textbooks, oversee funds, and otherwise determine educational policy for the state’s 3.8 million public school students. One of Leininger’s friends, San Antonio dentist and school voucher advocate Bob Offutt, was first elected to the body in 1992. During his first term, Offutt attacked health textbooks that were up for adoption. He lined up testimony from moral crusader groups such as the Christian Coalition and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. He proceeded to attack homosexuality, birth control, and material in the books that advocated government standards for safe drinking water. For the 1994 school board elections, at the behest of the state Republican Party, Offutt went out to recruit fellow travelers. He found three. One was Donna Ballard, a Pentecostal minis ter’s wife from the Houston suburbs. Through personal funds and PAC contributions \(Texans for Governmental donated some $45,000 an enormous amount of money as school board campaigns go to Ballard and the two other Christian-right candidates. And Focus Direct, a Leininger company in San Antonio that does slick, direct mail work for companies and politicians, produced and mass-mailed a leaflet featuring a photo of a black man and a white man kissing and accusing Ballard’s opponent Mary Knott Perkins of wanting to teach Texas children about oral and anal sex. Perkins, a grandmother many times over who is by no means a political radical, lost the election to Ballard. The other two Christian conservatives also won. The victories gave the elected state school board its first-ever Republican majority. During the next few years, the board turned into a circus as the band of right-wingers ripped up textbooks, inveighed against moral turpitude, and, as member Rene Nutiez said, “made it very frustrating to try to get anything done.” At meetings, Ballard frequently consulted with on-site “advisers” from the groups Leininger founded, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Texas Justice Foundation. Also helping Ballard was Anne Newman, head of a Christian “family values” group, the Texas Family Research Center. The Center is against sex education and rabidly opposes Goals 2000, a federal standardized school curriculum that even Governor George Bush likes. Not coincidentally, Newman’s office was at 8122 Datapoint Drive, the address of Leininger’s foundations. Since 1994, Leininger has become a virtual udder for the voucher movement and other conservative causes. During the past decade he has given more than $1.5 million to sway how Texans vote, and at least $3.2 million to influence public opinion in a conservative direction. In addition, between 1991 and 1997, Leininger’s J.C.L. and Covenant Foundations donated $5.6 million, mostly to politically-oriented, far-right non-profits. There is also evidence that he contributed to a shady organiza 12 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 22, 1999