The Richmond Times Dispatch is covering the story, first broke at BVBL, of the Warner campaign's spy in the GOP. At the time of the story's breaking, the few defenders of Mr. Payne attempted to paint him as nothing but a low-level policy worker with little interest in electoral politics. The fact that he is now a "strategist" for the Mark Warner campaign would seem to indicate that maybe his motives weren't quite as pure as they would like to pretend:

Former Gov. Mark R. Warner has hired a strategist from the Republican Party's failed bid to save its Virginia Senate majority to enlist GOP support for his Democratic U.S. Senate candidacy.

William H. "Will" Payne II joined the Warner campaign from the staff of Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, a key ally in Warner's successful effort to win a $1.4 billion tax increase in 2004 for schools, police and human services.

Payne declined to comment yesterday, deferring to Warner spokesman Kevin Hall.

"Will is able to reach out to those pragmatic independents and Republican-leaning folks who would be naturally inclined to Mark Warner's brand of leadership," Hall said.

But M. Boyd Marcus Jr., a senior operative for Warner's likely Republican opponent, former Gov. Jim Gilmore, said Payne's affiliation with the Democrat raises troubling questions.

"It was a grave violation of any kind of ethical standard to go out and hire someone from the other side who had access to immense amounts of sensitive information," Marcus said.

For reference, here's a posting from the comments at BVBL of one of Warner's defenders at the time:
Clean it up in '07 said on 15 Nov 2007 at 10:33 am:

Once again on this blog, much is being made out of these legislative assistant positions. I laughed when Fittzsimmonds supporters were actually asserting that these are some knd of “insider” policy shaping jobs. They aren’t. They are administrative posts that are VERY apolitical, and in some instances the positions are held by people of the opposite party of their bosses. There are some legislative assistants who have held their positions even as a different member of a different party was elected to the post. Some General Assembly members view this position just for what it is: a constituent affairs adminstrator…..and yes…they have to make coffee too.

They are people hardly in a position to be included in high level campaign and policy strategy sessions on the statewide level. Heck, Stolle himself probably has a hard time getting in on those conference calls.

It's hard to say if the dirty tricks or the transparent lies in defense of them are more sickening.