Judge lets Democrats seek more damages in phone-jam case

MANCHESTER, N.H. – A judge has ruled New Hampshire Democrats can go after more than just the cost of renting and using telephones that were jammed by Republicans on Election Day four years ago.

The ruling offers the Democrats the right to argue the GOP jamming in 2002 hindered their attempt to boost voter turnout.

Republicans wanted Judge Philip Mangones to rule the Democrats could claim only $4,974 in damages – the cost of renting and using phones for the get-out-the-vote campaign. Democrats argued they should be able to go after more than $4 million in damages – the cost of seven months of work for the get-out-the-vote effort.

That’s nearly half of what Democrats spent on their effort, which was disrupted for nearly two hours the day it was supposed to pay off.

Mangones placed some limits on Democrats’ claims.

He said Democrats can’t include the entire cost of their seven-month-long, get-out-the-vote operation. The costs of “postage, signs, rent and other such expenditures that were not proximately [almost directly] impacted by the telephone system interference would generally not be recoverable,” he ruled.

In rejecting Republicans’ arguments, Mangones said jamming the phone lines prevented Democrats from communicating with field offices, volunteers and voting sites.

“To the extent that the [Democrats] can establish a direct link between the precluded communications and the hindered [voter turnout] activity, such evidence would warrant consideration for purposes of damages,” he said.

The Republicans hired a telemarketing firm to place hundreds of hang-up calls to phone banks for the Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters union, a nonpartisan group offering rides to the polls. The election featured a hotly contested U.S. Senate race in which U.S. Rep. John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Two Republican operatives served prison time after pleading guilty to criminal charges in the case, and Shaun Hansen, the telemarketer whose firm placed the calls, agreed in November to plead guilty. Hansen is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

A national GOP campaign official, James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 10 months in prison, but is appealing.

Both sides claimed the ruling gave them the edge in the trial scheduled to start Monday in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

“There is still a significant liability facing these defendants. I would say that seven figures is not unreasonable,” said state Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan.

But Robert Kelner, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, said the Democrats’ case had been weakened.

“We continue to believe that the great weight of the evidence is, as their own attorney said earlier in the case, that there were not major damages for the phone jamming,” he said.

Kelner said a Democrats’ expert witness in a companion ruling relied on the memory of Democratic Party members, not an objective standard.

But Mangones said Democrats may be able to establish damage amounts by calling nonexpert witnesses because the information may not involve “highly technical or specialized scientific information.”

He said Democrats must “establish a sufficient and direct link between the interrupted communications and a negative impact upon the pre-Election Day planned activity.”

Democratic attorney Paul Twomey said the expert in question won’t testify.

“We came to the same conclusion that the judge did, that you don’t need an expert for those kinds of damages,” said Twomey.

Sullivan agreed:

“We felt basically that the people who experienced the phone jamming and those from the party who have knowledge of the costs of the get-out-the-vote program are qualified to put that evidence before the judge without theory and formulas.”