DAWSONVILLE, Ga. – Ralph Reed, candidate for lieutenant governor, had just finished his opening statement to the Dawson County Republican Party when retired pulp paper executive Gary Pichon sprang from his seat with a question that cut to the chase:

“Did you accept any gifts, commissions, or other payments of any kind from Mr. Abramoff, and are you likely to be a party in the unfolding investigation?”

Silence enveloped the 60 or so Republicans in the auditorium, and Mr. Reed’s cheerful manner turned tense. “No,” he replied. “No to all these.”

As everyone knew, Mr. Pichon was referring to Jack Abramoff, whose outsize Washington lobbying scandal has reached down to Georgia. Abramoff and Mr. Reed – the former executive director of the Christian Coalition – have been friends for 25 years, and until recently it had been a mutually profitable association. Now it is proving highly inconvenient for Mr. Reed and threatens to stall a career that has been emblematic of the modern GOP.

Mr. Reed served as executive director of the College Republicans from 1983 to 1985 and led a revival of the Christian right in the 1990s. He founded a grass-roots lobbying firm in 1997, bringing in millions of dollars in fees, chaired the Georgia Republican Party in 2002 when the GOP took over the state, and served as Southeast director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.

At age 44, he still has the choirboy looks that have been noted in dozens of profiles over the past 20 years. But the first major dent in Mr. Reed’s carefully cultivated image came with the disclosure in the summer of 2004 that his public relations and lobbying companies had received at least $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight Indian casinos competing with Abramoff’s casino clients.

Similarly damaging has been a torrent of e-mails revealed during the investigation that shows a side of Mr. Reed that some former supporters say cannot be reconciled with his professed Christian values.

“After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God,” a Georgia Christian Coalition member who had initially backed Mr. Reed, Phil Dacosta, said. “We are righteously casting him out.”

Among those e-mails was one from Mr. Reed to Abramoff in late 1998: “I need to start humping in corporate accounts! … I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.” Within months, Abramoff hired him to lobby on behalf of the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, who were seeking to prevent competitors from setting up facilities in nearby Alabama.

In 1999, Mr.Reed e-mailed Abramoff after submitting a bill for $120,000 and warning that he would need as much as $300,000 more: “We are opening the bomb bays and holding nothing back.”

In 2004, when the casino payments to Mr. Reed were disclosed, Mr. Reed issued a statement declaring “no direct knowledge of their (Abramoff’s law firm’s) clients or interests.” In 2005, however, Senate investigators released a 1999 e-mail from Abramoff to Mr. Reed explicitly citing the client: “It would be really helpful if you could get me invoices (for services performed) as soon as possible so I can get Choctaw to get us checks ASAP.”

One of the most damaging e-mails was sent by Abramoff to partner Michael Scanlon, complaining about Mr. Reed’s billing practices and expenditure claims: “He is a bad version of us! No more money for him.” Scanlon and Abramoff have pleaded guilty to defrauding clients.

Mr. Reed’s records have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors, and neither he nor his staff will discuss whether Mr. Reed has been interviewed or has been called as a witness to grand jury proceedings. No evidence has emerged that he is a target in the federal inquiry.

The controversy has confronted Mr. Reed with a fierce headwind here. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has published 48 articles and editorials on the Reed-Abramoff connection. The paper’s main circulation area includes the suburban areas surrounding Atlanta, which provide more than half the votes cast in statewide Republican primaries.

Although polling this many months before an election is not as reliable as surveys closer to November, a recent Zogby poll performed for the paper had troubling findings for Mr. Reed: When voters were asked to pick between “Republican Ralph Reed” and “a Democrat,” the generic Democrat won 36% to 33%, although the state leans strongly Republican. When voters were asked to pick between “Republican Casey Cagle,” a state senator running against Mr. Reed for the GOP nomination, and “a Democrat,” Cagle won, 35% to 30%.

Similarly, Mr. Reed raised an impressive $1.4 million in the first six months of 2005, before local coverage of the Abramoff scandal had heated up; his total for the second half of 2005 dropped to $404,258, below Cagle’s $667,692. Overall, Mr. Reed retains an advantage in cash on hand.

The problem vexing the Mr. Reed campaign is that even if the federal investigation clears him of wrongdoing, his status is likely to remain uncertain at least through the July 18 primary.

Without the prospect of a quick resolution of his role in the Abramoff controversy, Mr. Reed is in a political limbo – hardly a selling point for Republicans eager to keep their four-year-old hold on state government.

Whit Ayres, one of the state’s best-known Republican consultants and pollsters, said the best way to determine Mr. Reed’s political future would be to “ask Jack Abramoff. Only (the former lobbyist) and some prosecutors know what he has to say about Mr. Reed.” Mr. Pichon, the Dawson County Republican, said: “If Mr. Reed ends up winning the primary, we might be at the point where we blow our brains out over that issue.”