CONCORD, N.H. – The former executive director of the state Republican Party was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison for jamming Democratic telephone lines during the 2002 general election. The man accused of orchestrating the entire affair, James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, has pleaded innocent.

Chuck McGee pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to make anonymous calls with the intent to annoy or harass. He also was fined $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. He faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

“I made a mistake,” McGee said as he left court. “I’m prepared to pay for that mistake.”

McGee, who resigned after police alerted federal prosecutors to the phone-jamming operation, admitted paying $15,600 to a Virginia telemarketing company that hired another business to call get-out-the-vote phone banks around the state. The computer-generated calls – more than 800 in all – lasted for about an hour and a half and also disrupted a nonpartisan union phone line.

Prosecutors say Tobin, 44, of Bangor, the former Northeast political director of the national party committee working to elect Republican senators, orchestrated the jamming.

Tobin was indicted in December in federal court in New Hampshire for his alleged role in the scheme. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his trial is scheduled to begin in June.

Allen Raymond, who was president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC at the time, pleaded guilty to hiring a firm from Idaho to make the calls and was sentenced earlier this year to five months in jail.

Tobin and his lawyers declined to comment on McGee’s sentencing Thursday. But Tobin, through his Bangor attorney, Timothy Woodcock, denied the charges in December.

“I am saddened to learn that this action has been taken against me,” he said at the time in a prepared statement. “I have great respect for the justice system and plan to fight back to clear my name. The facts and time will demonstrate that these charges are without merit, and I am confident I will prevail.”

Tobin, a Windham native, worked in Maine and Washington for former U.S. Sen. William Cohen in the 1980s. He also worked on the election campaigns of U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

In 1996, he ran the national presidential campaign of millionaire businessman Steve Forbes.

Last year, he founded a communications and political consulting company in Bangor. He stepped down as Bush’s regional campaign chairman on Oct. 15, when New Hampshire Democrats said in a separate civil lawsuit they believed he took part in the phone-jamming scheme.

New Hampshire state Democratic Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan had written a letter asking that McGee not be sentenced to prison. She said he was a “low-level player” who also had cooperated with Democrats in the related lawsuit against Republicans. She said more senior Republicans should be held accountable.

“There were people who supervised Chuck, and they did not do so properly,” she said.

State Republicans acknowledged two years ago that they hired GOP Marketplace for telemarketing services in the election. But then-Republican Chairwoman Jayne Millerick said the company was paid to encourage people to vote Republican, not to jam lines.