John DiStaso reports that the strongest lawyers, those who can motion and bail for days, conference for weeks, have been found and tasked to keep Maggie Hassan's paperwork mistakes in the news until November:
CONCORD – The state Republican Party on Wednesday continued its series of requests for clarification of campaign finance laws as they relate to Gov. Maggie Hassan’s campaign organization by asking the Attorney General’s Office to provide an official opinion on reporting requirements of candidate and non-candidate political committees.
If the Attorney General complies with the request and issues an opinion, it would have broader implications for how political committees associated with candidates must report their receipts and expenditures.
There was no immediate comment from the Hassan campaign, but state Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley posted on Twitter:
“Is it possible for @NHGOP to sound anymore desperate? With such terrible candidates, message & organization, what else they got?”
The new request by NHGOP Chair Jennifer Horn comes as a direct result of a New Hampshire Journal report on Aug. 6, in which an official of the Attorney General’s Office said the Hassan campaign was within the law to accept unlimited political action committee contributions just before she formally filed the necessary paperwork to officially become a candidate and yet still not file a receipts and expenditures report on the deadline for non-candidate political committees.
Associate Attorney General Richard Head told the Journal on Aug. 6 that Hassan did not have to report on the June 18 deadline because when Hassan changed the name of her committee on June 12, the day she formally filed for reelection, the Attorney General’s Office also viewed it as a “self-designation” that at that point, it was a political committee of a candidate and so had then become subject to an Aug. 20 deadline.
Two years ago, the “Maggie ’12” campaign committee accepted big donations above the limits outlined for candidate committees because it was not a political committee of a candidate. But it complied with the requirement to file a June 2012 report, and did so.
It filed no June report this year.
Horn is seeking clarification in a formal opinion that focuses on large donations received by the Hassan committee – first named “Friends of Maggie Hassan” but changed to “Maggie ‘14” on June 12 – from several union political action committees.
Horn also again asked Attorney General Joseph Foster to formally recuse himself from a still-pending review of a union PAC contribution received by Hassan in 2012 because not only was he a member of Hassan’s campaign finance committee in 2012 – before he was named Attorney General – but also because he received several union PAC contributions as a candidate for the state Senate.
Foster told the New Hampshire Journal on Tuesday that he would “probably” recuse himself, but had not made a final decision, although he said he could not recall soliciting union contributions for Hassan in 2012. He said he would take a “conservative” approach and understood that it is important to dispel any appearance of a conflict-of-interest.