It’s the second time Ayotte has elevated a former NH GOP lawyer to a position with power over state legal disputes—and it comes as Trump moves to seize control of state election systems.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte has tapped a longtime Republican operative with a documented history of defending election interference to help decide New Hampshire’s election disputes—just as former Sen. John E. Sununu, the direct beneficiary of a 2002 scheme that operative defended in court, runs in the Republican primary to reclaim the Senate seat it helped him win.
Her nominee is Ovide Lamontagne, the Manchester attorney who oversaw the New Hampshire Republican State Committee’s internal investigation of the Election Day 2002 phone-jamming scheme and later represented New Hampshire Republicans in the civil lawsuit the state Democratic Party brought over the same scheme.
Ayotte’s nomination of Lamontagne to the state’s Ballot Law Commission, which was announced this week, lands as Republicans across the country target voting rights and redraw congressional maps in their favor, and as President Donald Trump’s Justice Department sues dozens of states, including New Hampshire, for their voter data. Trump has also sought to impose federal control over local elections.
In New Hampshire, Ayotte signed a law in 2025 requiring documentary proof of citizenship for absentee ballots, and another one last month banning the use of student IDs at the polls. This all comes after a 2024 law signed by her predecessor turned away hundreds of voters in 2025 elections.
Against that backdrop, Ayotte is placing on the body that adjudicates Granite State ballot disputes a man whose professional record on elections is defending the people who engaged in election tampering for the benefit of John E. Sununu, the candidate now seeking to return to that same Senate seat in 2026.
What Lamontagne actually did
In 2002, New Hampshire Republican operatives paid a telemarketing firm to flood Democratic ride-to-the-polls phone lines with hundreds of hang-up calls on Election Day 2002, blocking voters from getting rides to the polls. Sununu won his Senate race that year by 20,000 votes.
In 2003, the scheme came to light, and the NH GOP hired Lamontagne to look through the party’s own emails, files, and hard drives and decide what was connected to the scheme.
When federal prosecutors later tried to subpoena those same materials for the criminal trial of a Republican National Committee operative, Lamontagne went to court to keep them out of prosecutors’ hands. He filed a sworn affidavit telling the judge there was nothing in the files relevant to phone-jamming, and asked that they stay sealed to protect the NH GOP’s internal political information. The affidavit was first reported by The Associated Press on November 30, 2005.
The following year, Lamontagne represented New Hampshire Republicans in the civil lawsuit the New Hampshire Democratic Party (NHDP) brought against the state party over the same scheme. The case settled on December 1, 2006, with the NH GOP agreeing to pay the NHDP $125,000. The settlement was reported by Golden Dome News and Seacoast Online on December 18, 2006, which named Lamontagne as the attorney representing the state Republicans.
Former NHDP chair Kathy Sullivan, who chaired the party throughout the litigation, resurfaced Lamontagne’s role this week in a post on social media responding to the nomination news:
“I’m old enough to remember Ovide Lamotagne defending NH GOP when they jammed Democratic GOTV phone lines. Now Kelly Ayotte putting him on ballot law commission? Nothing to see here!”
It is not the first time Ayotte has elevated a former state Republican attorney to a position with direct authority over state legal disputes. In 2025, she nominated Bryan Gould—who previously served as Ayotte’s campaign attorney and represented the New Hampshire Republican State Committee in a series of high-profile election and political matters—to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Gould now sits on the state’s court of last resort.
The Lamontagne nomination follows the same pattern: take a lawyer with a long track record of working for the state Republican Party on some of its most contested legal fights, and install him on a body that adjudicates disputes those same partisan interests routinely bring.
The phone-jamming scheme itself is well documented in court records, federal prosecutions, and the firsthand account of one of its convicted participants: on Election Day 2002, roughly 800 computer-generated hang-up calls paralyzed five Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks and the Manchester Professional Firefighters Association’s ride-to-the-polls line for approximately 90 minutes.
The US Senate race that day was between Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Sununu, who won by roughly 20,000 votes. In the rematch that occurred in 2008, with no interference, Shaheen handily beat Sununu by over 40,000 votes.
Four Republicans were ultimately convicted or pleaded guilty: NH GOP executive director Chuck McGee (seven months), GOP Marketplace president Allen Raymond (five months, later reduced to three on resentencing), Mylo Enterprises owner Shaun Hansen, and James Tobin, the RNC’s New England regional director. Hansen and Tobin did not serve prison time for their roles in the scheme.
The Ballot Law Commission appointment requires confirmation by the five-member Executive Council, which has one Democratic member: Councilor Karen Liot Hill of District 2. The four Republican councilors have not publicly indicated how they intend to vote.
Trump endorsed Sununu on Feb. 1. Public polling has consistently shown Democratic US Rep. Chris Pappas leading Sununu in head-to-head matchups, and Democrats are bracing for another attempt by Ayotte and NH GOP to hijack a Senate election for Sununu.
