A lighthearted insider's account of the Republican election machine reveals the practices of libel, spin, and misrepresentation that have affected campaign outcomes throughout the past decade, in a tell-all confessional that also traces how the author landed in federal prison for fraud. 60,000 first printing.
This is the book written by the guy who jammed the New Hampshire Democratic Party and Labor GOTV operations in 2006. I usually look at confessional books of the political nature with a bit of dread; they’re written for the money and in the hopes that the other side might take them in.
However misguided the rationale, a few of them shed valuable light. I think the best one of these is David Brock’s “Blinded by the Right” because of the totality of the makeover and his redemption.
Allen Raymond is clearly pissed and rightfully so. He was let out to hang for carrying out the orders of those who RNC that paid him to do so and was given no shelter from the ensuing political and legal storm unlike those who had him do it.
What makes this book worthwhile are the details of how he got into the Game and what it turned him into.
His political education was in New Jersey on the Republican side because they were coming to power. Here he learned how to dive in the gutter and fight the nasty fight for that 50% plus 1. Wedge politics are where it was at and he was getting to be quite good at it.
As time goes on, he begins hearing that nagging sense of guilt that creeps upon you after you’ve shattered lives and destroyed people for sport. But, like most in the business, the guilt is used to fuel them forward.
He is rewarded for his campaign skills by being promoted into the upper echelons of the RNC under Haley Barbour. For the record, I did a brief stint with a vendor to the RNC during the 1996 Convention in San Diego and the RNC under Barbour was one hell of a machine.
During his RNC time, he makes valuable connections and contacts that help him when he gets out by becoming a vendor for phone services. It is here that New Hampshire comes into play.
The rest is in the headlines. But Raymond he tells the political tale it like its, without a blush of guilt. There are some real harsh truths here. The kind of truths that make the young and idealistic begin to worry about the “dirty” arena that modern politics has become.
He hated Bush in 2000 (he worked for Steve Forbes) and makes an interesting argument that because the Republicans have mastered the art of dirty politics that they share a majority of the blame for getting Bush elected because he wasn’t attacked as harshly as he could have been in the primaries and, knowing the Democrats on the national level couldn’t compete, that is what allowed Bush to walk into office.
I don’t disagree with him at all, especially the way, IMHO, Gore let it go in the end.
He has little sympathy for the public and even less for the opposition in whatever race he was running. He lays out what we who have done this know: people remember negatives, hate is a quicker motivator than hope, and that you need to placate competing interests just long enough for the election to happen.
It’s a harsh realm, but this is what power is.
I recommend this for those who have had at least one election cycle under their belt or those who can stand to watch sausage being made. It’s not pretty and not for the weak, but it’s real
Intriguing, hilarious, and yes, ultimately sad; this book won me over. From calls during popular sports games to using different demographics against party lines, this title offers that real glimpse into what many of us think is happening and sadly reaffirms that it indeed, is.
World over, election rigging has permeated in every electoral process inspite of advancement in technologies that are being employed to ensure free and fair elections. Allen attempts to undercover the tools, and methods of rigging an election. This book is not only necessary for any upcoming leader like myself to concord with but to academicians, policy makers, and also to every concerned citizen to deeply dissect into electoral rigging manouvers to negate negative impacts that sham elections always present.
Wish I’d read this book when i was in high school. I might have opted to explore a different career path. Some of what he writes I recall from my own experience but you also have to read in between the lines at times because why would you assume people dont have an agenda.
Allen Raymond is a highly entertaining guy. Completely unethical, but highly entertaining.
How to Rig Win an Election is the story of Raymond's rise and fall in Republican politics as a campaign consultant. It details his education, introduction to local politics in New Jersey, and the questionable actions that landed him in prison. Nothing he revealed was particularly surprising -- we've all seen what a circus American elections can be, but we can only guess at what happens behind the scenes. So this was an interesting peek into the mind of a PR guru.
I've always wondered how people in political PR can straddle that gray line between right and wrong and still sleep at night, how they justify the things they do, how they can be proud of their ability to twist information to make good politicians look bad and clean ones look dirty.
Turns out, for Raymond at least, it's all about being victorious election day.
Oh, and the money.
Had the southern "Republican Revolution" not been rolling across the country, Raymond could've easily ended up working as a Democratic consultant. But the Republican side of the aisle was where the money was, so that's where Raymond went.
He started working local elections in New Jersey, which were interesting to read about, but when he described his experiences working on the Steve Forbes campaign (against George W. Bush), he really got my attention.
Raymond and his team thought Forbes was too nice to win -- and they were right. Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush machine used a brilliant strategy, convincing Forbes not to go negative, to abstain from negative attacks.
And he fell for it. Forbes wouldn't fight back. His team would come up with responses to the lies and misleading information -- responses that were both true and catchy -- but Forbes wouldn't use them. He thought they were too harsh, too personal, too negative.
Raymond's time with the Forbes campaign didn't involve any of the shady dealings that would later land him in prison, but to me it was the most insightful part of the book. Whereas I respect Forbes more for knowing these things about him, Raymond saw him as a guy who didn't deserve the presidency because he didn't "have the gumption or the guts ... [didn't] have what it takes to go rip the [other] guy's face off."
Because of his humor, I felt more sympathetic to Raymond than I thought I would. It's a testament to his PR talents that I finished the book despising what he was part of, but not necessarily him as a person.
There are some truly great lines in the book, and in the Epilogue Raymond makes some sickeningly true assessments about former President Bush the Younger and the state of our democracy. But the most true of all was this about voters:
"[Politicians] get in power, they stay in power, and they keep the power. But don't the voters have some power in this mess? Sure. And they give it up every election."
A Republican campaign operative gives us an inside look at the dirty tactics used to win elections at every level. A really fun book until you remember it's non-fiction and what Raymond describes happens all over the country, every day, whenever a political race is underway.
The political tactics this insider describes are so deplorable and ingenious you can't stop reading. In one close statewide election, one candidate hired a bunch of actors to impersonate "black people in the ghetto" and make cold calls to Easter European immigrants on behalf of HIS OPPONENT, the idea being that these immigrants fear the black inner city and therefore will vote against the black people's candidate. Another tactic involves planting rumors via "survey:" calling up constituents and asking them "If you found out [Opponent's name:] was a lesbian/had fathered an African-American child out of wedlock/was a member of the communist party in college... would that affect your opinion of him/her?"
And guess what. Just being asked that question affects our opinion of the candidate.
The book's author got busted for election fraud and went to jail. This is his mea culpa that, in my opinion, is way too easy on himself. But it is one hell of an entertaining read (and if you're in the business of writing political screenplays, like I am, a gold mine of ideas). And it makes its most important point at the very end: how should we allocate blame for our evil election culture? How much fault lies in the unscrupulous campaign operatives and the candidates who employ their tactics, and how much fault lies within ourselves, the electorate, for being stupid enough, and distractable enough, to fall for these utterly substance-less antics?
This book was just about totally unreadable. I was disappointed because the topic is of great interest to me and it seemed like something I would enjoy.
It was hard to get past the "why me why me, everyone hates meeeeeee" section in the very beginning as Raymond is being sentenced for his crimes. The GOP had it in for him. His former colleagues turned on him, the punks. Yeah, okay, whatever.
The book follows his story as he attends the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University through various campaigns, the fateful New Hampshire race and the trial after. The writing did not do much to capture my attention. The topic held me for a while, but to be honest he seems to be more of a brilliant operative in his own mind. Thinking he had hit the jackpot as a campaign manager dealing with a potential domestic violence scandal when the guy he's working for may or may not be scum.
It was tough to read how he didn't seem to see any problem with his tactics, even when they are clearly shady, ie the phone jamming. Whatever it takes to win, eh? He does a little soul searching at the end, but it's too little, too late. I suppose people are supposed to take something from that, but...I just couldn't find it within me to be impressed at all.
Unless you have an interest in this guy's story or what it's like being in campaigns or identify as Republican, I would skip it. Beyond political persuasion the book is really not well written at all and despite the topic it was just too hard to get past the sloppy writing (there are even typos in my book). Library or bargain if you have to.
Light on specifics and at its essence, a strange attempt to both save some shred of dignity for the author as well as to sensationalize the political morass in which he worked. Raymond is the former Republican operative who worked his way up in the party and was convicted in the phone jamming scandal in New Hampshire. Ghosted by a former NYPost gosssip journalist, the book is more biographical and less technical than I expected - and therefore, more airy and less interesting. The author largely comes off as an adolescent who never really grew up or found a moral core until he was thrown under the bus by the moneyed interests he had always aspired to buddy up to. Yet, there is some level of forgiveness that surprisingly came out of the tale, largely due to the utter smallness of the story within the larger, uglier crush of political operations that bully and manipulate our democracy into a puppet for those who see it as all a game. This writer certainly did - he remarks that the actual stances of candidates never meant anything to him, and it is a stark reminder that until there is serious reform to the money being poured into politics, thousands of Allen Raymonds will exist and commit their crimes, most of whom will never face consequences.
This book is the author's manipulative attempt at redemption. For that, I'd rate it 2 stars. But, and this is the significant part, his criminal experience (as an unscrupulous political operative in the previous congressional and presidential elections) is unique. His is simply a unique perspective. He's like the crook who was at the scene of the crime -- and therefore can tell you exactly how things got done. For that, it's fascinating...and a bit terrifying. And would be 4 stars. Except, he's not doing full disclosure (maybe he can't), so that brings it down a notch in my book -- to 3 stars.
Read it to understand things you wish you didn't have to understand, but must, if you want to make sense of this season's political reality TV show -- which we call the American presidential campaign.
A very interesting behind-the-scenes look at campaigns and the shady, dishonest and sometimes unlawful practices that take place during elections. The author describes the lengths that he went to during his days working in politics with clever wit while still taking full responsibility for his actions that landed him in federal prison for three months in 2006. During his career as a political advisor and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, he participated in phone jamming (which is what he plead guilty to in federal court) smear tactics, push-polls, deceptive robocalls, as well as a host of campaign finance tricks and voter intimidation up to and on election days. While this is a book about a Republican operative, there is no doubt that such practices happen and have happened on both sides of the aisle. A definite read for political junkies like myself.
If there are ten books that everyone interested in government and politics in the USA should read, this would surely be one of them. The story is vivid, the author (with help) doesn't take himself too seriously, and the inside story of the cutthroat business of manipulating the populace to vote for Column A rather than Column B is something that should be required reading for civics teachers (and maybe for high school students).
The author did a few months in jail for going just a bit too far in trying to sabotage the Democratic Party. The whole story of his rise and fall in just ten years doesn't prove that crime isn't lucrative, but it does show that the folks you are working to elect are just as corrupt as the people working to elect them. There may be honor among thieves, but it doesn't extend to politicians.
Bastards. Everyone of them, though I suppose a harsher level of Hell will be reserved for the Rovite Republicans. It is hard to trust the veracity of a confessional book, but I feel that Raymond was telling the truth. I think there are some good insights into the divisions within the Republicans; many of the dirty tricks were pulled out during inter-Party contests. He also didn't seem to be pulling many punches in describing some of his fellow conspirators in the campaigning world. I just pray there will be many more trials should a new regime come to power; but he is right---"there's no crying in politics." Well, maybe a little, when the lights are turned off in your concrete cell, and Bubba says, "Come." :)
Four stars might be a little high, but this book was pretty enjoyable. It's a memoir of Allen Raymond, a Republican political operative who was found guilty of (I don't know what the official term is) obstructing phone lines of political enemies during an election.
Raymond was a rich "trust fund" kid who, after graduating with a Master's degree in Political Management decided to become a Republican operative, not so much out of political leanings, but more so based on job security and opportunity. His offering to his projects was a misture of good honest hard work and dishonest dirty electioneering. The book follows Raymond through his rise and fall. It is a pretty entertaining read.
The book was a bit slow to start and I found myself getting bored quite a bit while the author discussed campaign after campaign after campaign. Many of the details were interesting, however, and many of them illustrated how tainted campaign propaganda really is. Not any great read, but it certainly sheds some light on how campaigns are run and what sorts of things to keep in mind when selecting a candidate. The winning candidate never wins based on their policy, basically. Though a bit repetitive and boring at times, I'd certainly recommend it as a must-read for anyone who votes... so that means you.
Although he thinks of himself as a blameless scapegoat for the Republicans, Raymond still comes off as a giant douchebag at least to me. While a lot of the tactics and dirty politics he talks about are undoubtedly true, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise, and I found it hard to feel sorry for the author, as he acted like such a tool. And, the disappointment to me was that meaningful revelations about the political system were few and far between. Somewhat interesting but not terribly important.
Easy to read- a real page-turner. I couldn't help but being sucked into this take of how politics has failed in the United States. Written from the point of view of a Republican operative, this book exposes the underside of politics in a way that is easy to follow and enjoy, but is deeply disturbing. The work that goes on in order to manipulate the vote is not wholely surprising, but seeing it described in black and white is still shocking. A fun read for anyone with even a passing interest in US politics.
Extremely entertaining! The author wasn't a big time campaign manager or anything (unless you count the Steve Forbes presidential candidacy), but all his inside baseball about congressional races and party politics is great. Interestingly, he hates the 'Bushies,' and claims to have hated them from the start...even before he wound up on their bad side, took some shady call center work from them, got 'thrown under the bus,' and went to prison.
Part political expose and part memoir - this is the story of Raymond's rise and fall as a Republican consultant. The earnest "I've seen the light" tone gets a little old (particularly since it seems that his crisis of consciousness would never have happened if he hadn't been arrested and thrown in jail), but his discussion of the brutal techniques used to wage political war is both fascinating and terrifying.
Interesting book by the man who was behind some of the dirty Republican tricks of the 2004 election. It's interesting because it explains some of the nasty things that were done. Supposedly after spending a small amount of time in prison for phone jamming in New Hampshire, he is now a changed man. But, it seems to me that, like all of the Bushies who play bad, he's just getting even with all of his old buddies who left him holding the bag. There is no honor among thieves.
Written like an extended article from the DailyKos, How to Rig an Election details the dirty tricks that one GOP operative engaged in during the Bush years. This Mea Culpa fails to convince the reader that Raymond is truly contrite, instead satisfies by showing how an unscrupulous man could subvert the election process.
Well-written, occasionally funny, and a quick read, I recommend this book for anyone with an interest in politics.
I'm glad I borrowed this book from the library and did not pay to read this guys novel. He comes off as a complete scum bag! In the end he really does not sound like he was remorseful for what he had done and if he had gotten away with what he was doing I'm sure he would still be doing the same thing. Disenfranchising and deceiving voters did not even seem remotely wrong to him! People like this need psych evals and treatment with their jail sentence.
I was hoping for a little more dirt. The book was a quick, entertaining read, but none of the scandalous tricks they played on opposing candidates were all that scandalous. Maybe I just expect our election process to be far more corrupt, I don't know, but when I think republican smearing tactics, I expect the worst.
Account of the life of a recovering Republican operative who did some scuzzy stuff (including phone jamming). Fairly good read, but not amazing. The most interesting part to me was about the difficulty that northern, moderate economic conservatives had getting in with Newt Gingrich and his Southern strategy pals.
Wow, I liked this book far more than I expected. I found the author incredibly forthright about how the political system works and I learned a lot about the election process.
Surprisingly, this book is a definite page-turner and kept me up late into the nights because I just couldn't put it down.
Probably a 3 and a half star book (but I don't seem to have that option). A quick read that really held my interest. I saw the author of this book on a couple of political shows and was interested to read his story. I wish he was a bit more repentant but maybe that is what makes the book so real. It is amazing how corrupt our political system and how easily the public can be manipulated.
What Allen Raymond lacks in eloquence he makes up for with his ability to spin a good yarn. This book reads like a guy trying to sound like a guy telling a tale over a few beers at your local watering hole. And for a tale of low-level political tricks of far-reaching consequences, it's fitting.
A humorous look at the questionable practices of modern political campaigns. Don't blame the author, he just did what works. It is us, readily lapping up the lies, who bear the ultimate responsibility for the crassness of the campaigns and the irrelevance of elected officials' actions.
I didn't finish this book, as I got the message pretty clearly and my pile of books is really big! Anyway, it's a quick, relatively entertaining (in a depressing way) read. If you don't already know how rotten politics can be, give this book a shot...
The book was interesting but I expected more information on how they spin stories and other campaigning deceptions. Instead it was mostly a book about the authors professional life and how that played out.
I'm glad I read it but the story might have made a better magazine article.