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By Kevin Landrigan
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Smith’s campaign charged primary rival Chuck Morse with instigating a report in the liberal HuffPost that Smith mishandled a harassment lawsuit while serving as Londonderry town manager.
Campaign manager Seb Rougemont called “flat-out false” the harassment lawsuit claims and he accused David Carney, Morse’s campaign consultant, of spreading the story on social media last month.
“But make no mistake, this baseless story is nothing more than attempted character assassination by Kevin’s opponent, Chuck Morse,” Rougemont said in a statement.
“Morse is an establishment politician who is desperately trying to save his political career. When politicians cannot run on their own record, they resort to smearing good people with baseless accusations to cling on to power. That’s why they call Washington the swamp.”
Morse issued a statement which declined to address charges from the Smith camp about his alleged involvement.
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Morse and Smith are leading candidates among the 11 that will be on the Sept. [13] GOP primary ballot with the winner facing Hassan, a one-term Democratic senator.
The HuffPost report published online Friday alleged that Smith mishandled the case of Nicole Doolan, who worked as an administrative assistant in Londonderry for nine years before resigning in 2016.
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Doolan claimed in the lawsuit Smith made demeaning comments about women in the workplace such as making “dumb blonde jokes” and once referring to a female subordinate as a “pork chop.”
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Smith’s campaign cited four Carney tweets in June as proof the Morse campaign set in motion this story.
“Wonder if towns paying off employees exposed to sexual harassment and trying to keep the huge payout amounts secret is still a thing?” Carney had tweeted on June 4.
Rougemont claimed that after Smith confronted him about this, Morse admitted his campaign was behind the story.
“It’s disappointing to see Morse’s team still push ahead with this baseless smear, and partner with a liberal media outlet who would take the bait,” Smith’s campaign manager said.
“Chuck Morse can paddle around in the gutter of dirty politics and run his campaign focused on defamatory smears rather than his record of compromising with the Democrats as Senate president. Kevin Smith will not stoop down to Morse’s level.”