According to
Talking Points memo, Jim Tobin has
resigned from his post as President Bush's New England campaign chairman. Tobin was Northeast political director in 2002 for the Republican Senatorial Committee, the party operation working to elect Republicans to the Senate. He resigned last Friday over questions surrounding an
election-tampering scandal which took place in 2002.
According to the Portsmouth Herald:
"Democrats and Republicans fought in court this week over whether Democrats could question GOP officials, including Tobin, as part of a lawsuit about the illegal jamming [ of Democrats' phone lines during the 2002 election]. Democrats won a ruling Wednesday that cleared the way for the questioning, but depositions scheduled for Thursday and Friday were called off after the Justice Department said it would seek to delay them.
The 2002 jamming consisted of computer-generated calls to get-out-the-vote phones run by Democrats and the nonpartisan Manchester firefighters' union. More than 800 hang-up calls tied up phones for about 1½ hours."
You may be disturbed
to learn that, according to
witnesses in the case, it may not have been just a local affair, but possibly arranged by the Committee itself ( at least at a minimum, through its regional political director, Tobin).
Kudos to Josh Marshall for tenaciously keeping up with this story. In so many ways, he's doing the mainstream media's job for them.
This is a question of ethics and character as well as legality. We need to ask the Bush campaign why they had kept Tobin on in a senior position all this time, knowing he'd been implicated and knowing he'd be forced to resign once the alleged illegal activities were discovered and/or questioned.
Related stories:
Nashua Telegraph, Kevin Landrigan- Phone scandal may have Bush connection
UnionLeader/NH-Democrats name GOP official in phone jamming
New York Times-
"..Last summer, Chuck McGee, former executive director of the state Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and admitted paying $15,600 to a Virginia company that hired another business to make computer-generated calls that jammed Democrats' phone lines for about 90 minutes. Mr. McGee acknowledged speaking to an unidentified official with a national political organization about the jamming. Democrats have said they believe that Mr. Tobin was the official."
Guardian- Bush's New England Campaign Chief Resigns