One of the big questions hanging over the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming story is whether it was just a numbskull idea that no one vetoed or whether it was part of a pattern of dirty tricks.  There's always been some suspicion that Allen Raymond, the consultant who executed the plan, may have been a go-to-guy for this sort of operation.  Now there's evidence that he was.

Specifically, we have confirmation of Raymond's role in a dirty trick earlier in 2002, in the New Jersey senate race. And this one was against his fellow Republicans.

During Tobin's trial, it came out that Raymond's firm, GOP Marketplace, "worked for a U.S. Senate campaign" in New Jersey. That work, the prosecution said (Dec. 7th, pages 80-81 of the trial transcript), "resulted ultimately in a grand jury indictment."

The only candidate in the 2002 New Jersey senate race to ultimately be indicted was James Treffinger, who'd made a bid for the Republican nomination until he was forced to drop out when the FBI raided his offices in April of that year. Most of the charges related to Treffinger's dirty dealings as County Executive (contracts in exchange for campaign contributions, etc.), but there was one charge that had Raymond's name all over it.

During the Super Bowl, the DoJ's press release about the indictment said, Treffinger and his staffers conspired to make "thousands of negative phone calls to voters' homes." The calls attacked one of Treffinger's rivals in the Republican primary while attributing the calls to yet another of Treffinger's rivals. Brilliant. Voters got a smear about one candidate and were pissed at the other for interrupting the game - and it was a classic too: the Pats beat the Rams on a last second field goal.

Treffinger's indictment made reference to but did not name a political consultant who worked with Treffinger on the scheme. Now we know who that was.

But where else did GOP Marketplace strike? This income ledger for GOP Marketplace for 2001 and 2002 shows that they did business all over the country.

When Chuck McGee came to Jim Tobin with the idea of jamming the phones, Tobin turned to Raymond. Now we get a sense of why. He had a reputation of, at least, pushing the envelope.  Indeed, his work had already led to one criminal indictment.

We'll be looking for other examples of Raymond's work that might have bolstered Raymond's rep.