Concord – As a telephone poll floods the state with positive comments about one Republican candidate and "factual information" about his rivals, the state's deputy attorney general said yesterday the state law banning "push polling" does not apply to the presidential primary.

Orville "Bud" Fitch noted in an interview that he has testified before lawmakers in favor of expanding the law, but the provision he supported failed to pass the Legislature.

The statute that Fitch and an assistant attorney general are working under in their investigation and inquiry into two rounds of possible push polls says the ban applies to the state primary, general and special elections, "but shall not apply to the presidential preference primary."

Fitch said his investigation must consider whether the calls contain information applicable to the general election in November 2008. He declined to say whether that could complicate a probe or how it could weigh on the probability of a conclusion that the law was broken.

Fitch's comments came as the director of a Virginia-based conservative non-profit called Common Sense Issues promised to continue making nearly 100,000 calls a night in the Granite State this week to support Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and to provide "factual information" about other GOP candidates.

Patrick Davis said that before the end of the week, he expects the telephone marketing firm his group has hired to have called 430,000 households in the state, which he said is about 100 percent coverage. He said the calls will then stop during the week of Christmas and may begin again after Jan. 1.

Huckabee has asked the calls to stop and has asked for an Attorney General's Office investigation. But Davis said the calls will continue and do not violate New Hampshire or federal law.

"We are completely independent of Mike Huckabee and that includes him directing our activities," Davis said. "It would show coordination if we did that. I'm sure there is a cadre of lawyers at the other campaigns ready to go" if Common Sense Issues took directions from Huckabee or appeared to be working in coordination with his campaign, which would be a violation of federal election law.

Fitch, meanwhile, said his inquiry into an earlier round of calls, targeting Mitt Romney and lauding John McCain, continues.

"We're investigating whether or not these calls, the extent to which they ask who one will vote for for President, as opposed to the nominee of a party, and whether they talk about those things in the context of" the general election in November 2008, Fitch said. He said the key question is whether the content of the calls "has a relationship to who (those who receive the calls) are going to vote for for President," as opposed to the nomination.

He pointed out the statute's definition of push polling is, "Calling voters on behalf of, in support of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office," as opposed to a candidate for the nomination as a general election candidate for public office. The definition also includes "asking questions relative to opposing candidates for public office which state, imply or convey information about the candidates' character, status or political stance or record."

Fitch said investigators must ask, "Is this purely about the presidential primary or is it to some extent the November election?"

McCain's campaign disavowed any connection to the November calls, asked that they stop and asked for the attorney general's probe.

Assistant Attorney General James Kennedy said his office received a complaint last Wednesday from Huckabee's campaign regarding the new round of what Huckabee's camp called a push poll. Huckabee's campaign manager, John Saltsman, said calls are deceptive, will hurt Huckabee rather than help him and should be stopped."

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"We received a couple of other citizen complaints (yesterday), and we are just now starting our inquiry," said Kennedy. The New Hampshire Union Leader also received several e-mails from Granite Staters unhappy with receiving the calls.

Davis, however, is comfortable that his calls do not violate state law because the law does not apply to the primary.

He called Huckabee "the most common sense conservative in the race. He is consistently strong on our issues -- life, traditional marriage, a strong national defense, cutting taxes and limited government." He said he has "a real shot" at winning the New Hampshire Primary.

Davis said Common Sense Issues has been in existence in its current form since the summer of this year and had previously been known as Common Sense for the 21st Century. He said it was involved in U.S. Senate races last year in Ohio, Montana, Minnesota and Tennessee.

Davis said his group was responsible for similar calls in Iowa on Dec. 2, 3 and 4, "and we moved to New Hampshire on Sunday night.

"I think we'll be finished before the end of the week but that doesn't mean we won't go back up after the holidays," Davis said.

"I characterize them as a two-way communication with people," Davis said of the calls. "No one person has the same experience with these phone calls. I call them personalized educational artificial intelligence, which uses voice recognition technology." The minute-long recorded calls end with full disclosure that it was paid for by Common Sense Issues.

If a caller responds to an initial question that he intends to vote for someone other than Huckabee, he is then provided information about his choice.

A person who chooses John McCain, for example, is asked if he would be less likely to vote for McCain if he knew that McCain "refused to support" a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, if he knew that McCain was among the "gang of 14" senators who, in 2005, blocked then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's ability to invoke the so-called "nuclear option" to do away with Senate filibusters, and whether he knew that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law "silenced the free speech of right-to-life groups."

The call recipient is then asked if he would consider voting for Huckabee if his first-choice candidate drops out of the race. A positive response prompts several positive statements about Huckabee.

"It's all factual," said Davis.

He said his group spent about $40,000 on the calls in Iowa and is not sure how much it will spend on the New Hampshire calls. He said calls were also made Friday night in South Carolina and Florida.

State House Bureau Chief Tom Fahey contributed to this report.