Republicans ambush newspaper editors with spam campaign
CHICAGO, Nov 16 (AFP) -
A grass-roots Republican campaign to drum up support for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has left US newspaper editors fuming, and one of the its authors dumbstruck.
Joseph Morris, an Illinois republican, who helps raise funds for the state party, fired off an email late last week to 30 friends encouraging them to take their message of support to opinion-formers at newspapers across the United States.
And by Monday this week, editors from Chicago to Philadelphia were being bombarded by thousands of emails calling on them to urge the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore, to concede the hung election.
"It's driving me insane," said Michael Cooke, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times tabloid daily.
Cooke has received 2,500 email messages a day since Monday, along with hundreds of phone calls and voice-mail messages from Republicans "in places I've never heard of."
"I'd be very impressed if this was a spontaneous reaction from Americans from coast to coast reacting to what they see as a constitutional crisis.
"But that's not it at all. It's an organized campaign to drive me insane and I wish they'd stop it."
Morris, president of the United Republican Fund of Illinois, a group that has no official connection to the Bush campaign or the Republican National Committee, is taken aback but unrepentant.
"The actual response is beyond my wildest dreams. I was awestruck," said Joseph Morris, after being informed of the results of his crusade.
"I wanted to energize them. The email aspect of it was an afterthought. I'm a fairly low-tech kind of guy."
"We must bombard the news media and our public officials AT EVERY LEVEL ... we must jam their phone banks with calls.
"While you're at it send emails to your local newspapers as well," ran the message that triggered the cyberspace spamming campaign.
At the Washington Post, editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt received 1,008 of the messages in one day before the paper installed a filter on his email box blocking most similar messages, said Hiatt's assistant, who declined to be named for fear she might be targeted.
Hiatt also received more than 200 phone calls.
Philadelphia Inquirer readers' editor Kevin Ferris has received more than 4,000 of the messages since Monday, including 800 between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, before the paper installed a similar message filter. |
