Another GOoPer has come to speak out against his party's ruthless tactics, and he accuses the GOP of using its rule to set up, in effect, a pay-to-play system. Allen Raymond, convicted of phone-jamming in New Hampshire in the 2002 Senate race, has just finished his prison term and spoke to the
Boston Globe:
Fallen star blames self, GOP tactics
Jail term served in N.H. phone plot
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | June 10, 2006
WASHINGTON -- For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.
He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes's presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.
But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.
Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state's history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.
In his first interview about the case, Raymond said [...] the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.
"A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people," he said. "I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody."
Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a "bad thing." But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones "pushed the envelope" but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.
"Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business," he said. ``It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities."
To recap what happened in New Hampshire:
[In November 2002], Raymond received what he called a "highly unusual" request to jam Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire.
The idea originated with Charles McGee , who was executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, according to court records. McGee, who had served as a helicopter crew chief in the Marine Corps, testified that he learned in the military that "if you can't communicate, you can't plan and organize," so Democrats would be hampered in their efforts to get voters to the polls if their phones were constantly busy.
But McGee didn't know who could pull it off. "I had tried two vendors and they both had said no," he testified. So he asked for advice from James Tobin, the Northeast director of the Republican National Committee, who was in New Hampshire to help with Sununu's race against the incumbent Democratic governor, Jeanne Shaheen.
Tobin suggested hiring Raymond. Tobin had worked with Raymond at the RNC and was Raymond's boss during the Forbes campaign. Raymond said in the interview that Tobin initially called him, asking whether such a plan was feasible. "Anything can be done," Raymond said he responded. Shortly thereafter, McGee called to set up the plan. The New Hampshire Republican Party paid $15,600 to GOP Marketplace, which in turn sent $2,500 to an Idaho company that agreed to place the computerized calls that would jam Democratic lines. GOP Marketplace pocketed $13,100 as profit. [...]
By 7:30 a.m. on Election Day, the phones at five Democratic offices in New Hampshire, along with a firefighters' association office that was offering voters rides to the polls , were being jammed by a relentless series of calls that were terminated as soon as they were answered.
The winner of that election has some nice platitudes for us, but of course he goes on to serve out his ill-gotten term:
Senator Sununu, who was elected by about 19,000 votes, said via e-mail that he never knew about the plot until it was reported in the media. Sununu called the phone-jamming scheme "illegal, wrong, and just plain stupid -- and those responsible are and must be held accountable."
Sure. Just like Abu Ghraib. So a few rugrats serve a few months in jail, the race still goes to the Republicans, and they get the benefit of incumbency, which won't be taken away by any convictions or lawsuits. And they're going to keep doing this until they are ousted.
I was heartened a little from something I read today in the Wilson Quarterly, a terrific nonpartisan magazine with both its own writers and an extensive review of other magazines. From a review of "Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?" in West European Politics, this:
Most people who are cynical about political parties continue to go to the polls. [...] Most distrusters tend to hold their noses and vote for an established party, usually one that's out of power.
People can hold any part of their anatomy they wish in 2006 and 2008, but I do hope they convert their cynicism to votes for the Democrats, and give the opposition a chance to mount a much-needed correction.