GOP is accused of aiding Nader

New Hampshire Democrats, worried that Ralph Nader will siphon votes from Senator John F. Kerry in their state, angrily accused the state's Republicans yesterday of trying to undermine the Democratic ticket by helping Nader collect signatures he needs to get on the November ballot.

For the past 10 days, temporary workers hired by Norway Hill Associates, a Hancock firm headed up by a well-known GOP consultant, have been collecting signatures for Nader around the state. Last Friday, about a dozen workers buttonholed Bush supporters in the parking lot outside a Stratham farm where the president was speaking. They were armed with talking points instructing them to remind reluctant Republicans that "without Nader, Bush would not be president."

"In 2000 Nader got almost 30,000 votes; without his presence Al Gore would be president today," the talking points state. The talking points also instruct the workers to sidestep questions about who is paying them by responding that "Nader's campaign pays 75 cents a signature."

Bush defeated Al Gore by 7,000 votes in 2000; if Gore had won New Hampshire, the Granite State's four electoral votes would have sent him to the White House.

The New Hampshire Republican Committee and the Bush-Cheney campaign denied any direct involvement in the petition drive. But Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party said, "The whole thing sort of reeks."

"What happened here is that somebody woke up and said, 'Goodness gracious, the Nader people aren't very organized in terms of getting Nader on the ballot in New Hampshire,' " Sullivan said.

For months, Democrats have accused Republicans of aiding Nader's effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states, and in several of them the Democrats are planning legal challenges to block him. Several weeks before the GOP began its drive for Nader in New Hampshire, two conservative groups in Oregon admitted making phone calls urging supporters to help Nader get on the ballot there.

Emily Sawka -- a temporary worker from Kittery, Maine, who backed out of the Stratham signature effort and eventually handed over her talking points to the Democrats -- said that the petition drive "felt really unethical for me."

"It became clear to me what our position really was, what was really going on, that it was a campaign for Bush under the guise of campaigning for Nader," said Sawka, who added that she is an independent voter.

Backed by several former Nader supporters, the Democrats called on the Nader campaign yesterday to reject signatures collected by Norway Hill Associates.

Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said yesterday that the campaign is not working with Norway Hill and that it won't knowingly accept signatures collected by its temporary workers.

"We've told the Republicans we don't want their help, and we don't need their help," Zeese said. "If they give them to us we won't accept them. That's all we can do."

But Zeese acknowledged that it might be impossible to distinguish between the firm's signatures and those collected by its own volunteers.

To the Democrats' consternation, the Nader campaign has proclaimed publicly that it can't stop people from submitting signatures directly to the secretary of state. The campaign needs a total of 3,000 signatures, 1,500 from each of New Hampshire's congressional districts, to put Nader on the ballot.

"We're going to be on the ballot in New Hampshire," Zeese said. "The Democrats should accept that and move on."

David Carney, who heads Norway Hill, said he isn't sure how many signatures the firm has collected for Nader. Carney, who was former President George H.W. Bush's political director, says his goal is "ballot access and people being able to have a choice."

But he did not deny that he's a Bush backer or that Nader's presence on the ballot would probably help the president in New Hampshire.

In a poll conducted in July by the University of New Hampshire, 47 percent of likely voters favored Kerry, 43 percent supported Bush, and 4 percent backed Nader. Without Nader, Kerry was ahead of Bush, 50 percent to 45 percent.

"If the Democrats are so hellbent on keeping this guy off the ballot, there's got to be a good reason to get him on the ballot, don't you think?" Carney said.

Carney said that he hired the workers at the behest of a Missouri nonprofit called Choices for America, but that he will pay for the temporary workers himself. The Missouri group did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Sullivan suggested that Carney may have broken federal campaign finance laws because as a corporation, Norway Hill cannot make an in-kind contribution to a candidate. But Carney said the firm's donation was to Choices for America and that it didn't constitute a political contribution.

"This is not a political activity," he said. "This is clearly a ballot access issue, which is totally different from electioneering."

Jayne Millerick, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Committee, also portrayed the issue as one of maximizing choices for voters.

"Up here in New Hampshire, the party leadership on the Democrat side has a long history of discouraging primaries on their ticket and anointing their candidates," she said. "It's very important to point out that the end result of their actions today is the Democrats saying they don't want someone to be on the ballot."