Illegal Political Mailers Aim to Depress Ayotte Vote, Promote Indie Challenger

At least three possibly illegal political mailers are being sent to voters around the state of New Hampshire in an effort to depress the vote for U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, on Nov. 8, 2016, by getting conservatives to cast ballots for Aaron Day, an independent in the race. The mailers – professionally designed and mailed from New Jersey – target Ayotte for saying that she wouldn’t vote for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and claimed that she backs gun control legislation with Democrats in the Senate.

The mailers include quotes from Trump criticizing Ayotte and a “NRA-ILA” logo that was sloppily pasted onto the graphic, making it look like it was paid for by the National Rifle Association. They also include positive comments about Day, a liberty Republican turned indie. The mailers state that Day “firmly opposes Obamacare” and was “a strong supporter of the (c)onstitution and the constitutional right to bear arms” – clearly attempting to sway voters to the conservative indie in an effort to boost the campaign of Hassan in what is expected to be a very tight race.

Polls in the race have been seesawing between Ayotte and Hassan for months, according to the RealClearPolitics.com averages, with the incumbent currently holding on a 2.5 percent spread lead that is well within the margin of error of most polls. A few hundred votes in New Hampshire one way or the other could determine which party has control of the U.S. Senate later this year.

The NRA’s Political Victory Fund has given Ayotte an “A” rating and her Democratic opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, a “D” rating, so it is doubtful anyone involved with the org would target Ayotte or do so in such a haphazard or inelegant way.

The mailers did not include a return address, disclaimer, or acknowledgement of finance, which, even though it doesn’t endorse any candidate, appears to be a violation of 52 U.S.C. 30120(a)(3), which requires acknowledgement of who or what paid for all political advertisement.

Patch readers from all around the state including Concord, Chichester, communities in Rockingham County, as well as Litchfield, reported receiving the mailers in the past 48 hours.

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Even a small sampling of mailers to strategic voters could have cost thousands of dollars to produce. Mailers of this nature tend to cost between 45 and 60 cents a piece to mail, depending on the number of pieces sent. Bulk mailers also tend to take seven to 14 days lead time to get out to voters meaning that whoever put this together did so recently, since they include Ayotte denouncing support for Trump in early October after vulgar comments from an interview more than a decade ago emerged.

The postal code for two of the mailers is issued from the Kilmer Post Office in Edison, NJ. An employee in the bulk mailing department refused to answer any questions about the contractor or customer who paid for the mailers. An employee in the consumer affairs division denied that a mailer without a return address would be sent from his post office. When told that there were no return addresses on the mailers, he refused to continue to comment on the matter and stated he could not disclose customer information to Patch even though the mailers may have violated federal law.

A Google search of the postage code – WC MLG 08899 – led to a single reference online – an article on Chronicle.com, a news org that tracks stories about higher education. The .pdf on the news website article was from a political science “voter information guide” mailed out in 2014 by Dartmouth and Stanford professors to voters in New Hampshire and Montana. The mailer was criticized for having an official state seal and offering the political leanings of candidates running that year. The experiment, according to the article, was roundly “condemned by other researchers in the field as unwise and perhaps unethical.”

The political scientists involved in the mailer – Jonathan Rodden and Adam Bonica at Stanford and Kyle Dropp at Dartmouth – all refused to comment for a story in 2014 about the mailer, according to the article.

Dropp is assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College and is the co-founder of MorningConsult.com. According to his Weebly site, he was a visiting associate research scholar at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP), for the 2013-2014 academic year, which is about 19 miles from the Kilmer Post Office.

“I study how elites influence citizens through strategic rhetoric and the manipulation of electoral institutions,” he noted on his site. “For my dissertation, I engaged three prominent means of elite influence -- televised advertising, political endorsements and election administration policies -- that shape voters' attitudes and behavior.”

Dropp also released a study yesterday testing the theory that there were “shy Trumper” voters but not enough of them to affect the election outcome on Nov. 8. He did not return an email to his Dartmouth account or phone call by Patch about the matter.

Brian Buonamano, the new point person for elections at the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, also did not return a call for comment about whether or not the department was investigating the illegal mailers.

The Ayotte campaign offered no comment about the mailers.

Day denied being involved in the mailers.

“I do not have any involvement or knowledge regarding the mailers nor do I know who did produce them,” he said in an instant message to Patch. “While I don't necessarily disagree with the content of the mailers, it is important to follow the law regarding the proper disclosure of who funded them.”