Allen Raymond

Allen Raymond is a Republican political consultant in the United States who spent three months in federal prison for his role in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal.

Raymond told investigators that his former Republican National Committee colleague James Tobin approached him with a plan to tie up the phones of NH Democrats on Election Day 2002, during a close Senate race between Republican John E. Sununu and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Raymond collected $15,600 from the NH Republican State Committee and paid a small Idaho telemarketing company $2,300 to make non-stop hangup phone calls to six NH phone lines. Five of these were being used by Democrats to get out the vote; the sixth belonged to the Manchester (NH) Firefighters' Union, which offers non-partisan rides to the polls.

At the time of the 2002 phone-jamming, Raymond owned a Virginia-based GOP phone-bank company (GOP Marketplace) and also held a paid position as executive director of the Republican Leadership Council.

In an interview with the "Boston Globe", Raymond said he took part in the phone-jamming because 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." [ [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/10/fallen_star_blames_self_gop_tactics/ "Fallen star blames self, GOP tactics"] , June 10, 2006, "Boston Globe"]

The closing paragraph of his book "How To Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" ends with a paragraph reflecting on a conversation with his wife, just before he entered jail: "After ten full years inside the GOP, ninety days amongst honest criminals wasn't any great ordeal." ["How To Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" (ISBN 1-4165-5222-7)]

Books

* "How To Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" (ISBN 1-4165-5222-7)

References

External links

* [http://www.politicsnj.com/kornacki021003_Raymond.htm February 10. 2003 "PoliticsNJ.com" "Consultant with NJ ties implicated as NH campaign trickster"]
* [http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/8/how_to_rig_an_election_convicted January 08, 2008 "Democracy Now!" "How to Rig an Election: Convicted Former GOP Operative Details 2002 New Hampshire Phone Jamming Scheme"]
* [http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/how-to-rig-an-election-ask-the-author/ January 15, 2008 Raymond answers readers' questions at "Freakonomics blog"]
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=vlR1a_oQSOQ Allen Raymond interviewed by Velvet Revolution, January 2008]
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=AKz0rfLaf0Y Allen Raymond interviewed by Regal Literary, April 2008]