Former New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jayne Millerick says a Democratic advocacy group’s attempt to link her to an election day, 2002, phone-jamming scandal is a baseless political move.

Millerick ran the state GOP’s 72-hour, get-out-the-vote drive in 2002. But she said yesterday she knew nothing of the phone-jamming operation until February 2003, when, as party chair, she was asked about it by a New Hampshire Union Leader reporter the day before the scandal was first made public.

Millerick did not dispute evidence that she placed nine telephone calls to six New Hampshire attorneys in the hours before and after get-out-the-vote telephone lines at Democratic Party and Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association offices were jammed by hang-up calls on the morning of the election.

But she said those calls were unrelated to phone-jamming. She said she spoke with the attorneys about monitoring polling places as Republican “poll-checkers” to watch for possible voting irregularities. The 2002 election was rife with disputes between Democrats and Republicans over the eligibility of certain voters.

Millerick said she called the attorneys to ask “if they may be able to volunteer their efforts to try to counter these efforts by the Democrats. That’s all it was.”

Former state party executive director Charles McGee has admitted in court that the phone-jam was his idea. But Democrats have been trying for three years to determine if higher-ranking Republicans in New Hampshire or in Washington were involved.

James Tobin, a former Republican National Committee regional chairman, is the highest-ranking official implicated thus far. He is appealing two December convictions on telephone harassment charges.

Submitted as evidence in his trial were the records of more than 100 telephone calls he and other local GOP officials called in the weeks leading up to the election morning operation, election day itself, and several weeks after.

The Democratic-affiliated Senate Majority Project reviewed the phone records and revealed last month that Tobin made 115 calls to the White House Office of Political Affairs from Sept. 17 to Nov. 22, 2002 — and two dozen calls to that office on the eve of the election and during election day.

The political affairs office in 2002 was headed by Ken Mehlman, who now chairs the Republican National Committee, which has paid Washington lawyers $2.8 million to defend Tobin.

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has questioned Mehlman’s involvement, forcing Mehlman to repeatedly deny that he or anyone on his White House staff four years ago knew anything about the phone-jam. He has accused Dean and the Democrats of “making up a story.”

The Senate Majority Project has also focused on Millerick, pointing out that the record shows that on the eve of the 2002 election, she made calls to:

• The law firm of Rath, Young and Pignatelli, headed by Republican National Committee member and veteran GOP strategist Tom Rath.

• David Vicinanzo of the Nixon Peabody law firm, who was the state GOP’s legal counsel in 2002.

• Gordon McDonald of the Nixon Peabody firm, a veteran GOP activist.

• The law firm of Douglas, Leonard and Garvey, headed by lifelong GOP activist and former congressman Charles Douglas.

• The Devine Millimet and Branch law firm, the party’s current legal counsel.

• Criminal defense attorney David A. Horan of Manchester, an occasional GOP activist.

"Well, Jayne may have claimed innocence in the phone-jamming scheme publicly, but the evidence begs a few questions as to just how innocent she was," the Senate Majority Project says. "Are calls to criminal defense attorneys part of normal GOP election day activity?"

Millerick yesterday called the phone-jamming accusation against her “a desperate attempt to keep this story going.

“We had heard rumors in the days before the election that the Democrats were shipping in hundreds of lawyers to try to affect the New Hampshire vote,” she said. “The day before and the day of the election we were trying to make sure the Democrats were not successful in negatively impacting the election.”

Millerick said she coordinated the effort.

“As I’ve said for more than three years, (the phone jam) is something I first learned about when the Union Leader was about to report on the story,” said Millerick. “The Democrats can make what they want of it, but those are the facts.”

Attorney Douglas said Millerick called “a bunch of us who were volunteering to police the polls from illegal activity. It’s the same thing we did two years ago and the same thing we’ll probably do this November.

“These liberal groups are smoking too much conspiracy weed,”Douglas said. “It had nothing to do with phone-jamming, which none of us knew anything about.”

Horan recalled being at Oyster River High School in Durham checking student voters. He said there was “no way” he knew about phone-jamming at the time. “I learned about it probably when I read it in the Union Leader.”

Vicinanzo said his role as party legal counsel at the time prevented him from commenting.

State Democratic Chair Kathy Sullivan did not directly challenge Millerick’s account, but said, “A lot of interesting phone calls were made by people associated with the New Hampshire Republicans and the Republican National Committee on Election Day.

“We just need to continue to ask questions,” she said.