1.02.2008

NYTimes Profiles Dirty GOP Election Tricks

The big quote:

Such excesses are often dismissed as the work of a few overeager campaign staff members. Mr. Raymond argues, however, that illegal tactics are often standard operating procedure. “In my business,” he writes, “communications devices were all lethal weapons — and every fight was dirty.”


Such as:

It was a world in which, he claims, dirty tricks were the norm. When Mr. Raymond opened a political telemarketing firm, he was hired by a Republican challenging a New Jersey Democratic congressman. Mr. Raymond’s company — in a plan he says he hatched with the challenger’s advisers — called liberal Democrats and urged them to vote for the Green Party candidate.

Those same advisers, he says, gave Mr. Raymond another assignment: to call white households asking them to vote for the Democrat, using the voice of, as he puts it, a “ghetto black guy.” He also called union households, using voices with thick Spanish accents.

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