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  At his Colorado Springs-based mega-ministry, Focus on the Family, James Dobson has constructed a well-oiled, well-financed, high-tech political machine. (Part two of two) By Eileen Welsome August 2006 Page 6 of 7 For the 18-month period from April 2, 2004, through Sept. 30, 2005, Focus Action had a total of nearly $38.5 million in gross revenues. Approximately $22.4 million came from Focus itself as reimbursement for the use of “shared employees,” who, according to tax filings, were engaged in “educational activities.” (Focus Action also sent some of the money the other way, returning to its parent roughly $5.9 million for the use of facilities, equipment, and communication channels.) Were Focus Action employees spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and providing educational services to parents, or producing political messages to pressure uncooperative politicians? (James Dobson declined to be interviewed for this two-part series, and written questions that 5280 sent to Focus on the Family went unanswered.) What is clear from Focus on the Family and Focus Action filings is that these entities have spent a substantial amount of money on legal fees—a total of approximately $1 million in the last fiscal year. Undoubtedly, these tax attorneys want to make sure the two entities are following IRS guidelines, including the cardinal rule that funds cannot be commingled. Regardless of the math, Huttner believes that Dobson’s endorsements of political candidates raises questions about whether Focus has violated its tax-exempt status. Although Dobson prefaces his endorsements by saying that he’s speaking as an individual, Huttner says the disclaimer is disingenuous because Dobson is invariably identified in news stories as the head of Focus. “What James Dobson did,” Huttner says, “is he would go around the country and say, ‘I am here at this rally to endorse this candidate. Let me just tell you, while I’m making this speech, I’m doing this as a private individual.’ And of course the next day the papers always reported that James Dobson, the president of Focus on the Family, endorsed so and so. What we want to know is who set up these meetings? Who paid for the airplane flights to go visit these candidates? Who paid for the hotel room? It’s hard for me to imagine that James Dobson called from his home telephone to arrange all the travel and security and airline flights. If he did, great. My thought is, he may have very well used or misused his FOF staff to help schedule and organize these political endorsements.” Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and himself a powerful force within the GOP, has been an ally of Dobson’s. Listening to Norquist talk about Dobson’s influence, one gets a sense of how difficult it is to separate Dobson from Focus on the Family, and Focus on the Family from Focus Action, and, for that matter, all of it from the GOP: “As someone who’s interested in trends, the most important effect he has on politics is not that every once in a while he’ll endorse candidates, although I understand he doesn’t do a lot of that, but he has done some in the past. But the fact is that people who get married and stay married and have kids vote Republican. For every intact family he’s helped create, promote, or prolong, he’s actually created more small “c” conservatives. So the private is public. The personal is political.… If a baseball player said, ‘Write your congressman,’ I’m not sure if people would listen. The level of trust that he has and respect people have for him over time gives him a fairly powerful voice.” So where does Caesar end and God begin? Focus on the Family has provided Dobson and his family with a comfortable lifestyle. Dobson has become a wealthy man, primarily through the millions of books that he’s sold. He lives well, although not lavishly, and takes ski trips with his family and occasionally goes abroad. In Colorado Springs, he owns two lovely pieces of real estate: a town home with a market value of roughly $663,000 in Kissing Camels Estates, a gated community that overlooks the spectacular Garden of the Gods, and a $590,000 house that sits on an acre lot within walking distance of the Broadmoor, a five-star resort and hotel. Despite his wealth and youthful appearance, Dobson has had more than his share of physical ailments, including a heart attack, stroke, and prostate cancer. Eliminating burgers, pizza, doughnuts, and Baskin-Robbins from his diet has slimmed his waistline, improved his overall health, and allowed him to continue working at what employees say is a torrid pace. Proud of his huge appetite for work, Dobson exchanged his briefcase for a box to carry home his nightly paperwork, and later exchanged that for a suitcase on wheels. Some of his workaholic tendencies have apparently rubbed off on family members, who have also become writers and public speakers. His wife, Shirley, once content to be a stay-at-home mom, has authored or co-authored a number of books. She also heads the National Day of Prayer, which last year was held in the East Room of the White House with George W. and Laura in attendance. Their daughter, Danae, fortyish and unmarried, according to the Dobson biography published last year, has written 22 books, the majority of them aimed at children. Danae’s publishers have included Tyndale House, a company that has also published some of her father’s bestsellers. Following most closely in Dobson’s footsteps is his son, Ryan, now in his mid-30s, who has established his own nonprofit called KOR Ministries (KOR is Ryan’s hipster spelling of “core.”) An avid surfer and skateboarder, Ryan has been known to fly to Costa Rica to catch a good wave. He’s also divorced, a subject that apparently was taboo around Focus for a while. Recently remarried, Ryan himself has become a sought-after public speaker and is the co-author of three slim volumes about God, which are filled with lots of “dudes” and “cools” and packaged between covers with Gothic designs. (Responding to an e-mailed question about Ryan’s divorce, a KOR Ministries staffer wrote that Ryan didn’t want to break up with his first wife, but was forced to accept the divorce under state law. “While the details of this sad chapter are highly personal to Ryan and his former wife, suffice it to say that the biblical grounds that have permitted him to remarry are consistent with the scriptural understanding of abandonment.”) On a recent podcast, Ryan announced that he and his second wife, Laura, had moved back to Colorado Springs, and that Laura was pregnant. “My parents are doing back flips,” he told his listeners. Dobson has never drawn a salary from Focus. He derives his income from royalties on books sold through venues such as Barnes & Noble, The Tattered Cover, or Amazon.com. Dobson waives the royalties on any books sold through the ministry’s bookstore or website, which can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars of income for the nonprofit and a hefty tax write-off for Dobson. Focus’ radio, television, and Internet operations act as a huge publicity machine for Dobson’s writings, and Dobson’s personal corporation, James Dobson Inc., pays $5,000 a month to the ministry.
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