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District 9 Senate race getting testy, as Republican challengers trade barbs

A Republican primary to replace a retiring Nashua area state senator erupted with a string of personal charges Tuesday between two GOP legislators running for a revised District 9 seat. Now, a Bedford resident has filed a complaint with the state’s attorney general.

State Rep. Ken Hawkins, R-Bedford, said while Sen. Andy Sanborn, R-Bedford, opposed legal abortion rights, Sanborn’s campaign took $1,500 from a San Bernadino, Calif., dentist who’s made “blood money” renting space to abortion clinics and $250 from a convicted felon.

Sanborn fired back, saying Hawkins is an extreme ideologue and liberal taxer who opposes gun owner and parental rights.

What may have lit this flame was a hard-hitting Hawkins mailer sent to all Republican homes in the Senate district about Sanborn’s business finances and past associates.

Hawkins also paid for what Sanborn claimed Tuesday was an “illegal push poll,” asking voters if they would be less likely to favor Sanborn if they knew about financial controversies in his past.

Both messages from Hawkins were deliberately inaccurate, Sanborn said Tuesday.

“There is no question he is trying to turn this into an outright series of fabrications, lies and negative attacks, and I am not getting down in the gutter with him,” Sanborn said.

On Wednesday, the Andy Sanborn campaign said in a prepared statement that a Bedford resident has filed a formal complaint with the state attorney general regarding the push poll. Such calls are legal in New Hampshire when they adhere to the guidelines in RSA 664:16-a, which require the caller to identify themselves and give a number to call back.

Hawkins maintains all material he used was from newspaper accounts about Sanborn’s business bankruptcy and some controversial tenants.

“I am only trying to get out the facts about someone who claims he’s got all this financial experience and was a fiscal conservative yet he went bankrupt and stuck his vendors with bills of over $600,000,” Hawkins said.

Irving Feldkamp, of San Bernadino, Calif., did give $1,500 to Sanborn, and the campaign listed him as a dentist.

A Sanborn campaign spokesman maintained Feldkamp is a landlord who is anti-abortion and his son is a doctor who works with abortion providers.

Numerous religious publications and websites for several years have identified Feldkamp as an owner of Family Planning Associates that operates 18 reproductive health care clinics for women in California and Chicago area.

Sanborn’s campaign took $250 from Sherman Unkefer, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man sentenced in 1988 to 10 years in prison for fraud mismanagement of a precious metals company.

Feldkamp and Unkefer wrote out checks to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, the GOP candidate Sanborn endorsed last October.

Hawkins said the phone poll is legal and would withstand an election law complaint if one is brought to Attorney General Michael Delaney’s office.

Hawkins charged Sanborn started the character assassination spreading falsehoods about him while campaigning with voters.

“When Andy was going door to door, people would call me and say how come he’s saying you aren’t a true conservative, that you’re a taxer who’s anti-gun and is in the unions’ back pocket,” Hawkins said. “That’s what triggered this.”

After Ray White, of Bedford, announced last winter he would not seek re-election,
the state Senate carved up his District 9 seat, taking Merrimack out and placing it in the district of Senate President Peter Bragdon, R-Milford.

The new district includes several other towns Bragdon represents along with Mont Vernon, Lyndeborough and Bedford.

Several months ago, Sanborn moved to Bedford to run for the open seat after redistricting placed Sanborn’s hometown of Henniker in the heart of Senate Democratic Leader Sylvia Larsen’s district.

The winner of the Sept. 11 GOP primary faces Democrat Lee Nyquist, a Bedford trial lawyer.

“This will be the closest and costliest State Senate race in New Hampshire and I need your continued generous help to win,” Sanborn wrote in an email the candidate said brought in $5,000 Tuesday.

Sanborn has already raised $110,000 for the seat, including a $25,000 loan from himself.

As of last week, Hawkins had raised nearly $39,000 and spent $19,000 of it, including $8,000 on mailings. Through June, Democratic hopeful Nyquist had raised nearly $66,000 for his race.

Kevin Landrigan can reached at 321-7040 or klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Landrigan on Twitter (@Klandrigan).