The former president of a Republican telemarketing company admitted yesterday to helping jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.

Allen Raymond pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring to make harassing phone calls, a federal felony with a maximum sentence of five years in prison or a $250,000 fine.

The company, GOP Marketplace, LLC, was paid $15,600 by the New Hampshire Republican Party a month before the election. State Democrats are happy with Raymond's plea but still maintain that local Republicans had something to do with the phone jamming.

"It's our hope that the investigation will continue, and those individuals in the state Republican party that were involved in this and paid . . . to carry this out will be brought to justice," said Finis Williams, legal counsel to the state Democratic Party.

Federal investigators are still scrutinizing the phone-blocking conspiracy and declined to comment on the case.

Jayne Millerick, the chairman of the Republican State Committee said she and her colleagues were "pleased to cooperate fully with the Department of Justice's investigation.

"These allegations have been extremely troubling and we are happy that it appears they are coming to a just conclusion," she said in a written statement.

Two years ago, Millerick told the Monitor that the party didn't know anything about the phone blocks. The party hired GOP Marketplace, a Virginia-based telemarketing company that links campaigns with telephone vendors, to arrange get-out-the vote calls.

But court documents say Raymond used the money to hire a vendor to repeatedly call five get-out-the-vote phone lines at Democratic offices around the state. A sixth line, which Manchester firefighters were using to run their "ride to the polls" program, was also blocked. The company planned to block the phones from the time the polls opened to the time they closed.

He paid the vendor, which the Manchester police have identified as Milo Enterprise of Idaho, $2,500 to make the repeated calls, according to court documents. On Nov. 5, 2002, Milo made about 800 calls between 7:45 and 9:10 a.m., when the phone company unblocked the lines.

At the time, Democrats said the blocked lines hurt their efforts to get voters to the polls in five tight state Senate races.

Raymond will be sentenced in November.

(Meg Heckman can be reached at 224-5301, ext. 313, or by e-mail at mheckman@cmonitor.com.)