Jackson Free Press

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has ties to a GOP telemarketing firm that jammed New Hampshire phone lines used by disabled or dependent voters trying to get to polling stations in 2002.

Democrats were rankled when an investigation revealed that GOP Marketplace President Allen Raymond and his Virginia-based company interfered with the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election. Raymond's company specifically targeted phone lines that the state Democratic Party and a local firefighter's union were using to get out the vote for then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic contender for the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Robert Smith.

Democratic workers said they received a barrage of phone calls that terminated after five seconds, blocking legitimate callers from asking for help getting to the polls.

Cries of "foul" led to an investigation that ultimately resulted in Raymond's guilty plea in federal court to felony illegal phone jamming in 2004.

The national GOP has paid much of the million-dollar legal bills and says that the calls were routine election business that had nothing to do with telephone jamming.

Two years after the convictions, Democratic-leaning watchdog group the Senate Majority Project discovered that Barbour's investment company Helm Partners, LLC, composed of Barbour, Ed Rogers, Lanny Griffith and Ed Mathias, arranged a $246,700 loan to GOP Marketplace in 2000.

Barbour spokesman Pete Smith did not return calls. Barbour spokesman Buddy Bynum told the Associated Press last week that the governor had no idea the company was up to criminal activity, saying he was never consulted about day-to-day business dealings.

"None of the creditors had any role in the management or activities of the company. In fact, the loan was not fully repaid," Bynum told the AP. "There has never been any claim that Governor Barbour or any of the other creditors knew of any illegal conduct or did anything improper."

Christy Setzer, communications director for the Senate Majority Project, said that Barbour's loan made him a partner in the defunct GOP Marketplace doings. "He basically says he has no control over the day-to-day operations of the company," she said, "and there's no reason why he should, but his lawyers drew up the ownership papers. You can see that they actually had the ability to name one of the two managers of the company, so it's difficult to say that he had no influence. He wasn't a silent partner. More importantly, this is the former chairman of the RNC we're talking about. He certainly is highly invested in a company that's doing work on a close New Hampshire Senate race."

"I am convinced that GOP Marketplace will not only be a profitable business, but will also give Republicans an edge in the 2000 elections," Barbour said in a 2000 release. "… As soon as I heard about the idea, I started pulling together the necessary financing."

Mississippi Democratic Party Communications Director Sam Hall said the governor has yet to condemn the antics of GOP Marketplace. "And he's not going to say that because we've seen examples of the dirty kind of politics (Republicans) play right here in Mississippi," Hall said, referring to mail-outs during recent Mississippi special elections that labeled progressive candidates as "supporting abortion on demand" and "willing to take guns away from hunters."

Hall then referred to a whole host of Republican scandals, from Barbour's ties to AshBritt Inc. and Alcatec, to DeLay, Abramoff and Cunningham. "For a party that's so obsessed with claiming their moral superiority, they sure seem to have a lot of trouble with corruption lately," Hall said.

Previous Comments

ID

66090

Comment

BTW, all, don't forget Mr. Barbour's ties with other, very unsavory politics over in Texas, a story JFP broke last year. Remarkably, none of the state's media have followed up on Mr. Barbour's ties to Mr. Delay's antics. Maybe it's the boy code, what with all the boys writing all the editorials and news columns over at The Clarion-Ledger.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-05-07T12:38:38-06:00