STATE Rep. John Perzel, after a close-call election in 2000 in which he hung onto his Northeast Philadelphia seat by a mere 92 votes, vowed to set up a high-tech, year-round campaign operation.

State Attorney General Tom Corbett yesterday charged that Perzel and nine other current and former House Republican caucus employees broke the law by spending more than $10 million in taxpayer dollars to build and run that operation.

Also charged: former Perzel chief of staff Brian Preski; current chief of staff Paul Towhey; former state Rep. Brett Feese, who was the caucus chief counsel; Perzel brother-in-law Samuel "Buzz" Stokes; Perzel nephew Eric Ruth; and aides John Zimmerman, Don McClintock, Jill Seaman and Elmer Bowman.

Corbett said that Perzel used state resources to pay employees who then spent much of their time working on campaigns and creating and fine-tuning software to help Republicans win elections. Perzel also used state money for "dirty tricks" against Republicans who crossed him, Corbett added.

Yesterday's indictments were the second round in an investigation dubbed "Bonusgate" in Harrisburg. The first round came in July 2008, when 12 House Democrats were indicted on charges that they used state money to pay employees who took time off to work on campaigns.

"The difference in these two cases is the Democrats in the House paid bonuses to individuals and they used labor," Corbett explained. "The Republicans, under Perzel, used technology."

Perzel issued a statement declaring his innocence even before Corbett concluded his 50-minute news conference in Harrisburg.

The veteran Philadelphia lawmaker claimed that Corbett's candidacy for governor next year influenced his actions, because he had been criticized for prosecuting only Democrats in the case.

"It smacks of political opportunism at the expense of my reputation, and I am going to fight very aggressively to prove my innocence," Perzel concluded.

Corbett yesterday denied that his gubernatorial campaign had played a role in the indictments.

"I'm not running against any of these individuals, he said. "I'm not running against any member of the House or Senate. I have a job to do and I'm doing that job. We're following the evidence."

Here's where it led him:

_Obstruction — Corbett said that the defendants had tried to hide or fabricate evidence to lead his investigators astray. Legislator Feese, he added, created bogus handwritten notes about meetings in an attempt to show that state resources were not being used.

Corbett has been criticized for taking too long to bring charges in the investigation, which started 21 months ago.

"Now maybe you understand part of what we were dealing with and continue to deal with," Corbett told reporters after detailing the alleged obstruction efforts.

_Dirty tricks — Perzel allegedly targeted Republican House members who did not vote the way he wanted with difficult-to-trace "robo-calls" to their constituents that "were scripted in an extremely critical and damaging way against the representatives."

A House employee testifying with immunity said that Perzel had instructed him to be "a secret squirrel," using a computer firm to hire another company to place the calls. The tactic was used about a dozen times and cost $3,200 each time.

_Technology — Perzel, a well-known technophile, decided after the 2000 election to use computer software to create a "competitive advantage in campaigns."

He allegedly used Republican Information Technology employees to create a system to track key data — birth dates, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, voting tendencies — about voters in his district.

That system allegedly was later expanded to help other House Republicans in campaigns.

RIT employees told grand jury members that they spent 40 to 70 percent of their time on the state payroll working on campaigns.

Perzel also is accused of using two outside computer firms to fine-tune the systems developed by the House.

The indictment was later expanded to include handheld computers used on Election Day by campaign workers looking to drive Republican voters to polling places. Equipment was stripped of tags identifying it as property of the House Republicans before it was shipped to campaigns.

The defendants were charged yesterday with theft, criminal conspiracy and conflict of interest. Also charged with obstruction of justice were Perzel, Preski, Feese, Seaman, Towhey and Zimmerman.

"The obstruction is the worst," Corbett said yesterday. "You're interfering with justice."

Preski's attorney, Hayes Hunt, said that he plans to fight the charges.

"We're confident that Brian Preski did nothing wrong or illegal," Hunt said. "He will be completely exonerated once he has his day in court."

Corbett acknowledged yesterday that he met with Perzel in October 2007 and that Preski ran a law-firm campaign fundraiser for Corbett two months later, as reported in yesterday's Daily News.

Corbett said that those events happened at a time when he didn't have all the "facts in front of us" about the investigation.

"There has been very little contact with these individuals since that period of time, once we understood where everything was going with this investigation," Corbett added. *