How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative

Fresh out of grad school, Allen Raymond joined the GOP for one reason: rumor had it that there was big money to be made on the Republican side of the aisle.

From the earliest days of the Republican Revolution through its culmination in the second Bush White House, Raymond played a key role in helping GOP candidates twist the truth beyond recognition during a decade of crucial and bitterly fought campaigns. His career took him from the nastiest of local elections in New Jersey backwaters through runs for Congress and the Senate and right up to a top management position in a bid for the presidency itself.

It also took him to prison.

Full of wit and candor, Raymond's account offers an astonishingly frank look at the black art of campaigning and the vagaries of the Republican establishment. Unlike many "architects" of the political scene, the author takes full responsibility for his actions — even as he never misses a trick.

A completely original tale of the disillusioning of a man who enters politics with no illusions, How to Rig an Election is a brilliant and hilarious exposé of how the contemporary political game is really played.

"Republican campaign advisor Raymond achieved some notoriety when he plead guilty in federal court to jamming Connecticut phone lines in a 2002 Democratic get-out-the-vote effort-small potatoes compared to what he had gotten away with for more than a decade, vividly and hilariously chronicled in this outrageous career retrospective. For 13 years, Raymond worked his way up the ranks of GOP operatives by smearing opponents and worse in campaigns across the country, including the aborted presidential bid of Steve Forbes. Besides documenting such ingenious strategies as arranging for phone calls during the Super Bowl touting his candidate's opponent, Raymond witnesses the Republican party's rise to power in the 1990s, and the effects of that power, in both professional and personal terms. ('Bill Martini's screaming fits were reaching exciting new heights all the time.') Though Raymond appreciates the depravity of his former enterprise ('if you could find two of us Republican operatives who could still tell the difference between politics and crime, you could probably have rubbed us together for fire as well'), his confession often sounds a lot like boasting; naturally, Raymond is charming enough to get away with it, taking a deliciously cynical view of everyone involved (voters especially). For those who care about the electoral system, this look inside the sausage factory of contemporary campaigning is compelling, arguably essential, reading." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)