By Meghan Fellows
Guest contributor
Former political operative Allen Raymond gave the audience at the latest Cazenovia Forum lecture a peek inside the bag of dirty tricks he and others used to get their candidates elected. As the talk was held on Friday, Oct. 14, just weeks before the presidential election, Raymond was heavily focused on the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Raymond, the author of the 2008 book “How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative,” spent three months in federal prison for his role in a phone-jamming scandal in the 2002 Senate race in New Hampshire. He told the audience he “can thank my radical Republican grandfather who was a member of congress for my interest in politics.” Raymond followed into the Grand Old Party, and after working for a while in public relations, he moved into political campaigns. He has run congressional races and worked for the GOP back when Bush/Quayle was the ticket.
Raymond offered his take on Trump-Clinton contest, telling the audience that when Trump first announced that he was running for the entering the race, he knew without a doubt that he would be the Republican nominee.
“He is willing to go all the way to the right. But you can’t crawl your way back to the center to win,” he said.
He then went on to explain how Trump pushed his way through many candidates to end up where he is today. He said that Trump is willing to debate using a more bullying approach, and none of the other candidates knew how to handle it.
“Jeb Bush, John Kasich — they did no research on him. They had nothing to attack him with in the debates,” Raymond said.
Raymond explained two things that have to be done during campaigns: You have to research your opponent and research yourself, meaning a candidate needs to know what other people are saying about them.
He added that three elements that make up a winning campaign: time, money and organization.
“Clinton is rich in organization and talent,” he said.
As with many members of his party this election cycle, Raymond is not impressed with Trump. “Donald Trump running for office is a mystery,” he said, chuckling. And he expressed concern over the way the candidate has embraced the idea the election could be stolen, as his talk moved onto the topic of voter fraud and election rigging.
Raymond told the audience that said there are more people struck by lightning than voter fraud.
“There is a 9 millionth of a chance of voter fraud happening in the election. Trump’s rallying cry is ‘Our system is rigged.’ It’s a frightening thing,” he said.
Raymond quoted in agreement a Washington Post article that said “Our campaign represents an existential crisis like never before.” He agreed with a charge often made by Democrats that voter ID laws are just a method to keep minority voters from casting a ballot.
But he added that voter rigging happens more often than people realize. He described voter “caging,” which is the practice of sending mass direct mailings to registered voters by non-forwardable mail and then compiling “caging lists,” from the returned mail in order to formally challenge people’s eligibility to vote on that basis alone.
Raymond focused too on Trump’s call for people to monitor polls. He said this was dangerous and could stop people from voting all together. “People with gun permits can carry weapons when they vote,” he said. “By law, police cannot enter polling places without probable cause. Trump has just empowered the craziest of people to strap it on, go to places like Philadelphia where you can legally carry weapons, and look for voter fraud.”
Raymond ended his lecture by asking the bigger question: what next? What happens after this election? He said he sees the outlook for the Republican party as bleak, and it will have to see rebuild itself after this election is over. He told the audience that politics is a business, and everyone should remember that.
The next Cazenovia Public Forum will be Friday, Nov. 11, with pollster and bestselling author, John Zogby.
Meghan Fellows is a junior at Utica College
