A staff member on Dennis Michaud's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign was arrested yesterday for allegedly falsifying election records.

The move came after the Scituate Board of Canvassers contacted the state police regarding suspicious signatures, many of which looked identical and two that belonged to dead men.

Robert Cooper, of 513 Washington St., Apt. 1A, Coventry, was arrested for signing an affidavit attesting that signatures on Michaud's nomination papers were obtained "in my presence."

Michaud's campaign submitted 57 signatures -- including those of the two dead men -- to Scituate, but election officials there deemed only 11 valid.

Lt. LeRoy V. Rose Jr., state police assistant detective commander, said Cooper was charged with one felony count and faces up to 10 years in jail and a $5,000 fine if convicted.

"Obviously these people are deceased, so it could not be signed in his presence," Rose said.

Michaud, a Republican, dropped out of the race last week after failing to collect the 1,000 signatures necessary to be on the ballot. He said his staff gathered about 1,300, but local canvassing boards judged only 933 as valid.

The Cranston police opened their own investigation yesterday into 260 signatures Michaud's campaign submitted in that city. Of those 260, only 163 were submitted to the secretary of state's office as valid signatures.

The probe began after Joseph A. Delorenzo Jr., chairman of Cranston's Board of Canvassers, asked a staff member in City Hall to take another look at Michaud's papers after reading about the Scituate problems in yesterday's Providence Journal.

Delorenzo said he found one sheet where "the handwriting was exactly the same" for 11 of the invalid signatures. He notified the Cranston police, who opened an investigation into what Maj. Ronald T. Blackmar called "irregularities" in the papers.

Michaud did not return calls to his cell phone yesterday.

After being released from custody on personal recognizance, Cooper, 49, said: "Does it concern me? No, because I did nothing wrong."

Cooper said he was struggling to gather signatures because Governor Carcieri is "a popular guy" and many Rhode Islanders refuse to support a Republican.

"Getting signatures proved to be one of the more challenging things I've seen happen in a while," Cooper said. "We were going through 25, 26 people before we got a single signature."

So, just a few days before the July 14 deadline for submitting nomination papers, Cooper sought some help.

"Models, dancers, we had to do something," he said.

Cooper called Giovanni A. Calise, 26, who runs Centra Company LLC, a modeling and talent agency, out of his Scituate home. The bulk of his work involves arranging fashion shows for aspiring models, he said.

Calise called around and found a few people to help collect signatures for the Michaud campaign -- two models he knows through his agency; his girlfriend, who he said is also a model; his brother, and his next-door neighbor. Each worker would get $50, plus $25 for each sheet of signatures turned in.

Cooper defended the practice yesterday saying: "The affidavit said it was signed in my presence. If the woman is over there, she's still in my presence. If she's twelve-feet away from me over here, she's still in my presence.

"When I'm all done, I know that the person with that paper had a warm body in front of them signing that paper," he added.

Ryan Calise said he agreed to help because he could use a little extra money. "It sounded easy -- something to do, quick."

But the work was not nearly as easy as the 18-year-old had expected. He went to the Providence Place mall with the neighbor, Mason DeAngelus, also 18.

"People were really rude," Ryan Calise said. "It wasn't worth it for me."

Later, they gave up on the mall and stood outside a gym in Cranston for four hours and collected dozens more.

They also hit upon another way to get signatures. DeAngelus called up a few friends and asked if they would mind if he put their parents' names on the list, he said. He also started calling strangers, straight out of the phone book, and asked to add them to the list, he said.

When Giovanni Calise found out what DeAngelus was doing, he said he told him to stop, and to get rid of any names that he had collected that way. DeAngelus agreed, but at least some of those names were submitted by mistake, Giovanni Calise said.

In all, Ryan Calise and DeAngelus collected about 100 names, enough to earn about $75 each, they said.

Cooper said the last major campaign he worked on was Republican Elizabeth Leonard's failed 1992 bid for governor. He used to build, sell and repair computers but has been out of work for "a couple of years" and now is on worker's compensation for back problems.

"I am pretty much out of work, doing things from here to there," Cooper said. "Supervising the signature collecting was painful for me, but I did it anyway."

So how did the dead names appear on the list?

DeAngelus and the Calises said they had no idea what happened.

"I don't think we went to the cemetery," Ryan Calise said.

smayerow@projo.com / (401) 277-7513

zmider@projo.com / (401) 277-8068