Dems question timing of donation to N.H. GOP

CONCORD, N.H. – Democrats say three donations made to the New Hampshire Republican Party just before Election Day 2002 raise troubling questions about who paid for a scheme to jam phone lines set up to get voters to the polls.

Rep. Tom DeLay’s political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, gave $5,000 to the state Republican Party on Nov. 1, 2002, four days before the election in which Republican John Sununu won his Senate seat by defeating former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Four days earlier, the state party received $5,000 each from two Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist with close ties to DeLay. Together, the three donations nearly equal the $15,600 Republicans paid a telemarketing firm to make repeated hang-up calls to the Democratic phone banks.

DeLay recently stepped down as House majority leader after being indicted in Texas on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Abramoff also has been charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation.

“It just so happens that the money came into New Hampshire just a matter of days before the phone jamming. Is it just a coincidence? I don’t know, but that’s a question I’d like to get an answer to,” said Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan, who argues that the tribes would have no reason to spend money in New Hampshire. “What you have here is the sound of two scandals colliding.”

The hang-up calls overwhelmed the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote phone banks and a ride-to-the-polls line for more than an hour on Election Day. Former state GOP director Chuck McGee and Republican consultant Allen Raymond pleaded guilty to taking part in the scheme, and James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, a former regional director for the Republican National Committee, is scheduled for trial in December.

Suspicious that other high-ranking GOP officials outside the state played a role, Democrats meanwhile have filed a lawsuit seeking more information about who devised and paid for the scheme. But the state GOP’s current chairman, Warren Henderson, said Thursday that the state party was thoroughly investigated and McGee was appropriately punished.

“No doubt, Kathy Sullivan will continue to find any angle she can to beat this dead horse, but the federal government already investigated this,” he said.

Andrew Blum, a spokesman for Abramoff, had no comment Thursday. Calls to the Agua Caliente tribe and the Mississippi Choctaw tribe were not immediately returned.