James Tobin was Bush's 2004 campaign chairman for New England. A few weeks before the November 2004 election he stepped down from the post because Democrats suggested he was involved with tampering with an election.
On December 1, 2004 he was charged with tampering with the November 2002 New Hampshire election. At the time Tobin was the New England Regional Political Director for the RNC. Tobin was concentrating on the Senate race in which John Sununu defeated Democratic former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen by about 19,000 votes.
He's been indicted for conspiring with Charles McGee, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, to repeatedly call the get-out-the vote phone banks of the NH Democratic Party and the Manchester Professional Firefighters. These lines offered voters free transportation to the polls. Mr. McGee has already pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.
The RNC spent nothing for McGee's defense, but even though the case against Tobin seems pretty strong (there's another witness too), the RNC has spent more than $722,000 on Tobin's defense. The first payment was made on December 9, 2004 under former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. But additional payments were made on May 19 and June 15 under current chairman Ken Mehlman who took over in January 2005. There's some idle speculation that they must be paying Tobin's bills for a reason. It's a much bigger deal if Tobin was involved because he was a national official not just a state one. If the RNC really did tamper with an election, that's bad.
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