Bradley alleges phone pranks on eve of primary

On the eve of the 1st Congressional District Republican primary, the campaign of former U.S. Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro) has been forced to shut down its phone service, which has impeded its get-out-the-vote effort.

According to Bradley's campaign manager, the campaign received complaints from voters who said they received hang up phone calls from the Bradley campaign phone number. Voters received a phone call with the Bradley campaign number appearing on their caller ID, but the person on the other end of the line would hang up the phone as soon as the voter answered the phone. The campaign shut down its phone service once they heard of the issue but voters continued to complain that they were receiving the phone calls two hours later.

"When we first received calls we immediately worked with our phone service provider and subsequently shut down all calls in and out of our campaign office phone number," Periklis Karoutas said in a statement. "The calls complaining about this did, however, continue up to two hours after we cancelled all phone activity. Jeb Bradley for Congress has had to shut down its Get Out the Vote phone operation in order to mitigate this situation. It has been determined that this is not a technical problem on our end and ultimately may be a campaign eve prank."

Rival John Stephen's campaign manager, Greg Moore, said the Stephen campaign is not involved in the prank phone calls.

"We are certainly not involved in any prank phone calls," Moore told PolitickerNH.com. "We have more than enough to do to keep us busy."

Karoutas said the campaign has requested that the Attorney General's office looks into the matter, which Moore said the Stephen campaign supports.

"We call on whoever is doing this to please stop immediately and understand elections must give all people the opportunity to rightfully participate in the process without childish shenanigans like this potentially affecting the outcome," Karoutas continued.

Moore said, "we support any Attorney General investigation and hope they get to the bottom of it."

Karoutas added the campaign hopes to restart their phone service as soon as possible.