Dirty Tricks

At one point you used the voice of a quote-unquote "scary black man." Can you explain that?
Again, you assume that certain households are predisposed on issues. So that call might go into a white Democratic home. In this case it would be a recorded call. The point there would be to try to tap into potentially latent bigotry, to force that household to make a particular decision on its vote. You're tapping into triggers. When I was working, the main thing was to win, not to be moral.

How much do these calls cost, whether they're push-polls or just fake advocacy calls?
It all depends. If it's an automated call, they're fairly inexpensive: a couple of cents—five or six cents at the most. They used to be more expensive, but the cost has come down a lot. A live phone call? It depends on length and script and stuff like that. Maybe your average is 65 to 75 cents. Maybe a little bit more. And that's for a live caller delivering a brief message. If you're talking about 20 questions, that is much more expensive.

You also conducted something you might call the "Super Bowl scheme." Can you explain that?
I had been hired by a campaign in New Jersey to do a call during a Republican primary. It's kind of complex, but there were three candidates: two were from the southern region of the state; one was from the northern region. The idea of the call was to describe the positions on abortion of the two [southern] candidates. But the real intent of the call—because it was done right in the middle of the Super Bowl—was to deliver a message at a time when most people were consumed with the football game.

And the idea was to make people angry at the two candidates for disrupting their game?
It was targeted at active Republicans. One of the things it was doing, which you do in campaigns, was using a candidate's position on whatever issue to drive votes one way or another. So it was designed to inform and then push pro-choice voters one way and pro-life voters the other.

You were trying to split the vote of the two southern candidates?
And then do it at a time when the recipients of the call would throw up their hands and say, "You know what, I'm voting for the guy from the north!"

The Green Party has been used as a tool. Can you explain how you used the Green Party?
Yeah. And you saw this as well in 2006 in Pennsylvania in the Senate race, where the Green Party candidate got backing from Republican donors. That speaks for itself. If you can siphon votes off from a Democratic opponent, that certainly helps you on Election Day.