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A Recording Of "The Call"

by: phillip anderson

Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 16:04:58 PM EST


OK, I've been trying to make heads or tails of this all day. As you may know, Maureen O'Connell claimed this morning that some voters in the 7th district received multiple misleading "robo calls" during last night's Super Bowl broadcast, a practice eerily similar to the multiple misleading robo calls placed by the NRCC and it's affiliates on behalf of dozens of Republican Congressional candidates last November.

On the one hand, her claim seems to be yet another tired Rovian ploy, much like her god-awful Bin Laden direct mail piece which was denounced today by the NJDC as "desperate and shameful" and on the other hand it seemed to be another roll of the dice by a struggling campaign to manipulate the media space the day before the election, much like Joe Lieberman's "bloggers broke my website" ploy from last August.

On the third hand, Maureen's website has posted what it purports to be a recording of the actual call. You can listen here.

phillip anderson :: A Recording Of "The Call"
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the more i think about it, (4.00 / 5)
the more i really do believe that this more GOoPer bullshit.

1. this is a dirty trick with a very republican pedigree. the national GOP started pulling this all over the country last november in the final week of the campaign. they did it in tight races where they were behind and almost exclusively where they were defending a seat. sound familiar?

2. making shit up also has a long and sad republican history. remember when karl rove bugged his own office?

3. these are the actions of a struggling campaign. campaigns with momentum and hapless opponent don't so stuff like this. this seems to point directly to maureen's folks.

i think joe bruno has been reading karl's biography or at least he's paying someone who has.

TODAY is day one. It always is.


Aye... this reeks of Rove's style (4.00 / 1)
by now, many of his tricks are out in the open, so it's probably just a staffer pulling a copycat move, rather than something orchestrated from high up.  But still, very Rovian feel to the whole thing.

[ Parent ]
Probably right. (4.00 / 2)
Thing is, what people seem not to realize is that two out of three households don't watch the Superbowl. So if you're being super-devious and sending out robocalls to disturb people, you'd have at best a 1/3 success rate.

My guess? O'Connell's people ordered the calls - which is probably why they're all positive - and forgot about the game, or didn't realize they'd be pissing people off. That would be of a piece with the execution skills of that campaign to date.

Seems blatantly obvious to me.


[ Parent ]
Tangent... (0.00 / 0)
That's the first time I've seen her website.  Truth be told, I think I like her site better than Johnson's, if only for the appearance that it's somewhat regularly updated.  Meh... doesn't really matter much at this point.

Secondly, her map of the district is color coded for something, but I'm not sure what, and it doesn't say.

Is that population?  Registration?  Religious affiliation?  That map had to come from somewhere, and I'm curious where it came from, and what it's showing that they're not bothering to tell us about.  Anybody know?


Map WAS from Senate website BUT (0.00 / 0)
YOU can't get it anymore... because if you try to go to that page http://www.nyssenate... you get "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" see diary   NYSSENATE7.COM Disappeared?

How this can be legal is beyond me.


[ Parent ]
More Bruno shenanigans (0.00 / 0)
It means they have removed Balboni from the Senate websites. The district doesn't get represented there the senator does. No senator, no district. Nice huh?

Take some time to browse around the various senate pages. Compare and contrast the Republican pages with the Democratic pages. Compare and contrast the level of detail, mapping, district info, etc that is presented.

Districts that elect democrats do not get the resources to even put up a decent web page. That is how totally in control... and how petty... Bruno is.


[ Parent ]
Tangent on a tangent (0.00 / 0)
The district looks like Iraq. Maybe the color coding is for "insurgent free" zones or something. You know republicans like to say that Baghdad is less dangerous than New York City. But is it less dangerous then say... Mineola?

[ Parent ]
Well the robo-call.... (0.00 / 0)
At least identifies that they want to talk about O'Connell and not like the NRCC robocalls that start off with wanting to talk about the opposition candidate and confuses the public.

Well its desperate and stupid and I'm glad the republicans are doing the same shady things over again.

-- MrMacMan


Damn (0.00 / 0)
You beat me to the punch.

[ Parent ]
The recording doesn't seem like a dirty trick to me (0.00 / 0)
The infamous robocalls during the 2006 congressional elections  started with something like "Hi I'm here to talk about (insert Democrat running)" and then it would say negative things about the Dem.  The idea was that if the person hung up it would call back and keep saying the Dem's name, giving the idea that the calls were from the Dem candidate.  If the person stayed on the line the message would continue with negative attacks on the Dem.  This O'Connell recording starts with "Hi I'm here to talk about Maureen O'Connell" and continues with positive stuff.  This seems like shooting yourself in the foot rather than a dirty trick to me.

P.S. Yesterday I was volunteering for Johnson's Campaign and a lot of people are tired of this race.  They complained to me about all of the mailings and fliers they were getting (I was handing out fliers).  This Robocall thing may be the last straw for many people in the district.


I listened to it at least three times and (4.00 / 1)
I still don't think I heard what the rest of you are hearing.

"Be sure to vote for Maureen O'Connell" doesn't soung like somebody is sabotaging her campaign, or is that not what I heard?


Agreed (0.00 / 0)
I'm not exactly sure what she is complaining about.  Likewise, robo-calls are required by law to have a "Paid for by..." somewhere in them, and being that the clip that O'Connell provides omits that, I suspect something pretty fishy going on.

[ Parent ]
Early Absentee Numbers are In (0.00 / 0)
Heres the link: http://thepoliticker...

Looks good (0.00 / 0)
Especially since absentee votes tend to favor Republicans.

[ Parent ]
So I am sitting here watching Countdown (0.00 / 0)
and there is footage of Giuliani running as the talking heads are speaking about his posible run for president. Guess what? He is walking with O'Connell! What are the odds of that not being a set up??

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Really.... (4.00 / 1)


We've got some work ahead of us.

[ Parent ]
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