New Hampshire Senate race scandal linked to White House aide?

[ProSense]

New Hampshire Senate race scandal linked to White House aide?

By Evan Lehmann Sentinel & Enterprise Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- As Democratic voters sought to penetrate jammed phone lines during New Hampshire's tainted U.S. Senate election in 2002, one phone was always free for incoming calls -- and it was in the White House.

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The scandal, for which two Republican operatives have been jailed this year and another convicted, stemmed from the illegal efforts of a GOP-hired phone bank to bombard the phone lines of five help centers assisting Democratic voters get to the polls.

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U.S. Sen. John Sununu, a Republican, won the election, beating Democrat Jeanne Shaheen by five percentage points.

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The calls to Davis, then the political operative responsible for the Northeast, had nothing to do with the phone-jamming scandal, Ken Mehlman, Davis' boss at the time, said this week.

more...

http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/local/ci_3719542

Editorial Observer

A Small-Time Crime With Hints of Big-Time Connections Lights Up the Net

By ADAM COHEN
Published: April 17, 2006

The Internet is a great breeding ground for political conspiracies, and there is a new one lighting up computer monitors across the country. Bloggers are fascinated by what they see as eerie parallels between Watergate and a phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire. It has low-level Republican operatives involved in dirty campaign tricks. It has checks from donors with murky backgrounds. It has telephone calls to the White House. What is unclear is whether it is the work of a few rogue actors, or something larger.

In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The fee for the jamming, reportedly $15,600, was paid by New Hampshire Republicans.

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The parallels drawn with Watergate are a good place to start:

1. The return of the "second-rate burglary." The New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal is being dismissed as small-time, state-level misconduct, but it occurred at a critical moment in a tough election...

2. The return of the high-priced lawyer...

3. The return of "follow the money." (As if it ever left.)...

4. Does anybody get to ask: "What did they know, and when did they know it?" Democrats would, of course, like to connect the jamming to the White House, and this month they found a possible link...

New Hampshire Democrats have filed a civil lawsuit seeking to learn more about what occurred...The Senate Majority Project has been putting key documents on its Web site (www.senatemajority.com) and is continuing to investigate.

The phone jamming could turn out to be the work of a few bad actors. It could, on the other hand, take the Abramoff scandals to a new level of skullduggery. At least, 34 years after Watergate, we know the right questions to ask.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/opinion/17mon4.html?ex=1145419200&en=4b8b68a63131650a&ei=5087%0A

[saltpoint]

1. Whoa. This is not going away, is it.

And Jeanne Shaheen would have made a terrific U.S. Senator.