As then-House Minority Whip Mike Veon fought for his political life in 2006, the lines between campaign and state work blurred to the point they were sometimes indistinguishable, with phone canvassers using lists of constituents who had visited his state office and with state workers assembling phone scripts and voter registration strategies.

More than 80 e-mails obtained by the Post-Gazette show how the Veon campaign drew dozens of state workers from Harrisburg and beyond to Beaver Falls in spring and fall of 2006 to work for his reelection. Most of those were later among the roughly 700 state employees who received large, taxpayer-funded bonus payments, ostensibly for outstanding state work, even while some of them spent little time at their state jobs that year.

Mr. Veon, D-Beaver, was unsuccessful in holding on to his seat in the 14th state House district in the wake of voter outrage over the 2005 pay raise bill. He was alone among state legislators in refusing to vote to rescind the unpopular raise and, while he managed to win renomination, narrowly lost the general election to Republican Jim Marshall.

Internal e-mails from that campaign show frequent exchanges between Mr. Veon’s state employees, using the state’s computer system, and field workers armed with hand-held Blackberry devices and campaign e-mail accounts. Both Mr. Veon and his top aide, Brett Cott, dispensed advice from their Harrisburg offices, while the top Veon aide in Beaver County, Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink, frequently mixed state-funded office work with political efforts.
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