NYT : New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path

New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path

By CHRISTOPHER DREW | November 6, 2006

An automated voice at the other end of the telephone line asks whether you believe that judges who “push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy” should be controlled. If your reply is “yes,” the voice lets you know that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Montana, Jon Tester, is not your man.

In Maryland, a similar question-and-answer sequence suggests that only the Republican Senate candidate would keep the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In Tennessee, another paints the Democrat as wanting to give foreign terrorists “the same legal rights and privileges” as Americans.

Using a telemarketing tactic that is best known for steering consumers to buy products, the organizers of the political telephone calls say they have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in five states over the last several weeks in a push to win votes for Republicans. Democrats say the calls present a distorted picture.

The Ohio-based conservatives behind the new campaign, who include current and former Procter & Gamble managers, say the automated system can reach vast numbers of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional volunteer phone banks and is the most ambitious political use of the telemarketing technology ever undertaken.

But critics say the automated calls are a twist on push polls — a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other.

The calls have set off a furor in the closing days of a campaign in which control of Congress hinges on a handful of races.

Late last week, Representative Benjamin L. Cardin, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maryland, demanded a halt to the calls, saying “this sort of gutter politics” was distorting his record. Some political analysts said the practice could mislead voters and discourage them from taking calls from more objective pollsters.

Andrew Kohut, a longtime pollster and the president of the Pew Research Center in Washington, said the automated calling “smells like a push poll, it feels like a push poll, so I guess we have to call it a push poll.”

But Harold E. Swift, one of the organizers of the Ohio group, said he viewed the move beyond phone banks or simple taped attack messages as a “very sophisticated approach to voter education.” The goal, he said, is to “make people aware of the candidate’s stand on the issues that are important to them.”

Mr. Swift said his group, Common Sense Ohio, is a nonprofit advocacy organization and is financed by wealthy Republican donors. A sister organization, Common Sense 2006, has received a donation from the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association. Under federal law, the groups are not required to disclose their donors publicly or reveal how much money they have raised.

Mr. Swift acknowledged in an interview that if some critics thought the group’s polling approach seemed deceptive, “I grant that they can reach that conclusion.”

During the automated calls, which last about a minute, the moderator first asks whether the listener is a registered voter or which candidate he favors. Voters receive different sets of questions depending on how they answer. The system then asks a series of “yes” or “no” questions about different issues, and each answer guides the system forward.

For instance, in the Montana race, if a voter agrees that liberal-leaning judges seem to go too far, the moderator quickly jumps to another question that highlights the differences between Mr. Tester and the Republican incumbent, Senator Conrad Burns: “Does the fact that Jon Tester says he would have voted against common-sense, pro-life judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts, and Conrad Burns supported them, make you less favorable toward Jon Tester?”

In Tennessee, after listeners are asked if terrorists should have the same rights as Americans, this comparison between Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the Democratic Senate candidate, and Bob Corker, the Republican, is given: “Fact: Harold Ford Jr. voted against the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and voted against renewing the Patriot Act, which treats terrorists as terrorists. Fact: Bob Corker supports renewal of the Patriot Act and how it would treat terrorists.”

In some cases, Democrats say, the language is too provocative, and, in others, contrary facts are omitted. Mr. Ford and Mr. Tester, the Montana State Senate president, are both said in the calls to have voted repeatedly for tax increases, but no mention is made of the times they voted for tax cuts, their campaigns say.

Mr. Cardin, who supports stem cell research, said he was incensed that the issue was reduced to the notion that he voted to allow “research to be done on unborn babies,” while his opponent, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, “opposes any research that destroys human life.”

Mr. Swift said his group had tried to report each candidate’s views accurately. But, he said, “it is very challenging to take something as complex as a person’s background and track record and communicate it in a 30-second sound bite.”

He added, “This is a time of year for pretty strongly worded positions on all sides.”

Even some Democratic strategists acknowledge that the distortions are no worse than the television and radio advertisements by both sides and that they probably do not cross any legal lines. While many Democratic campaigns and support groups also rely on computer-dialed telephone attacks, Republican leaders said they had not seen Democrats use any poll-like solicitations in the major races this year.

Common Sense Ohio was formed in July to run issue advertisements in the governor’s race there, and it became involved in the Senate races in Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Tennessee, and in the abortion referendum in South Dakota.

Mr. Swift said two of the six people who formed the group, including its president, Nathan Estruth, worked at Procter & Gamble. Mr. Swift said that he and another of the organizers were retired from the company and that the group’s members shared conservative views on taxes and social issues.

Mr. Swift, who was once in charge of global privacy issues at Procter & Gamble, said some of the donors asked the group to expand beyond Ohio. He said Mr. Estruth, who was traveling and could not be reached for comment for this article, was familiar with ccAdvertising, a company based in Herndon, Va., that was hired to place the Common Sense calls.

Gabriel S. Joseph III, the president of ccAdvertising, said in an interview that the company, which also handles commercial marketing campaigns, began using the interactive software in political and lobbying campaigns in 2000. Its chairman, Donald P. Hodel, was a cabinet official in the Reagan administration and later served as the president of two conservative groups, the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family.

Mr. Joseph said his computers could make as many as 3.5 million calls a day on behalf of all clients, at 10 to 15 cents a call. According to its Web site, the company has also run phone campaigns for a number of conservative organizations, including the National Rifle Association, and for businesses as varied as mortgage lenders and a local Starbucks.

Mr. Swift said that through the calls his group had identified core supporters, who will receive a reminder call on Election Day.

Neither Mr. Swift nor Mr. Joseph would say how many people had been called in the effort, though Mr. Joseph said his company had tried to reach every home in Maryland.

Given Census Bureau estimates of just over two million households in the state, the calls could cost $200,000 to $300,000.

Mr. Joseph said that in a typical campaign, half of the homes answered the calls. About 20 percent of the people who were called answered some of the questions, he said, and only about 10 percent completed an entire survey.

Despite the controversy, some experts question how much impact the calls will have amid the rest of the political fog, especially since some voters quickly get annoyed with the technique.

Richard H. Timberlake, a retired minister in Knoxville who supported Mr. Ford, said he hung up after the first two questions. “It became almost a barrage against him,” Mr. Timberlake said.