Dirty Tricks Without Illusions

On His Own

Elizabeth Raymond is hardly the only person who does not want to comment on Allen Raymond's career in politics.

Barbour declined to comment on Raymond. So did McConnell.

McGee, Raymond's co-conspirator in the phone-jamming plot, who now runs a direct mail company in New Hampshire, also took a pass. "I appreciate your call," he said, "but I don't have any input to make."

Tobin has an unlisted number and could not be located. His attorney in the criminal case, Dane Butswinkas, did not return phone messages.

Also silent was Tom Blakely, a Republican political consultant who Raymond claims hired him to target New Jersey voters of Eastern European ethnicity with the "angry black man" calls. Blakely, president of Washington-based Jamestown Associates, declined to comment on Raymond's allegations, but he instructed an aide to relay a one-sentence message: "The notion of targeting racist Ukrainian Democrats in Princeton is totally absurd."

Ironically, one of the few people in politics who'll say anything nice about Raymond is Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the New Hampshire Democratic Party, which sued Raymond, McGee, Tobin and the RNC over the phone-jamming conspiracy and won a settlement of about $130,000.

"I actually like Raymond," Twomey says. "The stuff he did was absolutely reprehensible, but when he got caught, he took responsibility and he told the truth and I respect him for that. "

'I Paid the Price'

When Raymond went to federal prison in Loretto, Pa., in 2006, he didn't tell his sons, who were 7 and 4.

"We told them Dad has to go to India on business for three months," he says.

"We didn't want them to be afraid," his wife adds.

And prison was a pretty scary place. "I was behind the double razor wire with real criminals," he says. "I saw two guys basically carve each other up, although I didn't hang around to see how it wound up."

His prison job was tutoring inmates. One day, he found one student, a felon named Mack, too agitated to study. A piece of gym equipment had broken and couldn't be replaced because of a 1996 federal law called the No Frills Prison Act, which curtailed spending on prison recreation. Raymond was familiar with that law: He'd touted it in ads for candidates who wanted to appear tough on crime.