Harris sticks by consultant

Accusatory book

Kratovil: ‘Not Interested’

The First District campaign of Republican nominee Andy Harris said it will retain its campaign consultant, even after a high-profile Republican candidate in a battleground district cut his ties with the company due scandalous accusations in a newly released book.

On Monday, Chris Myers, a GOP candidate in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, announced his campaign would no longer use Tom Blakely and Jamestown Associates, the consulting firm he leads, after they were impugned by the tell-all book, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative.

"Jamestown helped us achieve a 10 point victory over an 18 year incumbent in a three-way primary,” Harris campaign manager Chris Meekins told PolitickerMD.com. “The odds of winning were minuscule and because of their strategy we won."

"We are keeping Jamestown on.”

Allen Raymond, the book’s author who went to prison for phone-jamming in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate race, accuses Blakely of race-baiting and designing communications so they appeared to be from an opponent’s campaign. Raymond alleges Blakely orchestrated robocalls using the voice of an “angry black man” to drive down turnout from a Democrat’s ethnic white union supporters.

When asked about Harris’ campaign consultant and whether it would come up in the campaign, Kratovil told PolitickerMD.com that he had not been aware of the story, but wasn’t interested anyway.

"I don't really need that story [to win]," Kratovil said, implying people were tired of negative politics.

Responding to why Jamestown Associates wouldn’t become a liability, Meekins echoed the sentiment.

“We ran our campaign based on the issues which is the same thing we will do in the general election."