The state is investigating a letter sent to Independent voters that forges the signature of Gubernatorial candidate John Lynch. It also distorts the Hopkinton Democrat's positions on a host of campaign issues.
Attorney General Kelly Ayotte says any person who has received or has any information about the fraudulent letter should contact the Department of Justice immediately. Ayotte called the letter a serious matter and pledged a speedy investigation.
"We'll act as quickly as possible once we are able to get sufficient information to bring an appropriate charge."
The letter in question was dated August 30. It calls John Lynch the only candidate who can take on Craig Benson and send "Benson and his Cabletron cronies home." The letter then inaccurately described Lynch's stances on what the letter calls the positions important to democrats. Lynch's campaign treasurer Kate Hanna described the letter as a dirty trick and said it shows that some will go to any lengths to manipulate elections.
"The letter make fraudulent and unauthorized use of the Lynch campaign stationary and logo, forges John Lynch's signature, falsely states it was paid for by John Lynch for NH and falsely represents John Lynch's views on a range of issues."
The issues touched on in the letter include topics like heath care, abortion, gay marriage, gun control, the death penalty, the minimum wage, taxes and the environment. On each, Lynch's positions are distorted or fabricated. On the topic of gun control, for instance, the letter claims Lynch supports a statewide gun registry. In reality, Lynch says he'd leave current gun laws unchanged. The letter also says Lynch supports same sex marriage. He doesn't. The letter further claims Lynch will push for universal heath care, and supports raising the age for the death penalty. In fact, Lynch has promised neither. Lynch campaign attorney John Malmberg says if the people who sent the letter are found, they're may be several approaches to possible prosecution.
"We've looked at the state statues on forgery and fraud...and the state statutes on purity of elections and think they might apply to this.I haven't looked at the federal stautes at all but there is a very clear mail fraud statutes that used for many purposes."
Lynch campaign says it got a copy of the letter yesterday by a concerned supporter who lives in Manchester. The campaign says it also received a half-dozen or so calls from others supporters throughout the state who had received the same or similar letters. Governor Benson says the dirty politics of the letter should not be tolerated.
"There's no room in NH politics for games or worse to be played. We have to take this seriously...cause we happen to have an electorate that happens to turn out in pretty record numbers -- that's why we have the NH primary... And if we start to violate that compact with the state of NH we'll lose something pretty special to us..we'll lose the integrity of the election process which is number one, and we'll lose the NH primary."
Benson did, however, acknowledge that he was aware of the letters' existence as early as last week. His campaign received a copy of the letter that had been sent to a relative of a staffer.Some of the letter's themes were similar to remarks the Governor made Tuesday about democrats stances on heathcare, the death penalty and gay marriage. Benson says any overlap was happenstance.
"It's clearly a coincidence if there is even... I haven't seen the letter so I don't know what's in the letter itself. I've heard a couple of anecdotes from the letter..But the fact of the matter is I believe we need an election process where people are as clear as possible so voters can make informed decisions on many different topics."
The Governor was also a bit player in the day's other electioneering controversy. State senator Carl Johnson charges that his GOP primary opponent -- Benson healthcare adviser Richard Brothers -- was placing calls to voters telling them he had the Governor's backing Benson says he was unaware of the alleged phone calls, and that he had pledged neutrality in all Republican primaries.
