This is pretty funny....so much for the well-oiled, GOP GOTV machine.
Souder gets some unwanted party help
Says he’s tried to stop calls from GOP group
By Sylvia A. Smith
Washington editor
Don’t help so much, Rep. Mark Souder is telling Republican political operatives in Washington. Or he’s trying to.
Souder, R-3rd, said he is angry about Republican-orchestrated phone calls to northeast Indiana voters attacking his Democratic opponent, Tom Hayhurst. But Souder can’t get the National Republican Congressional Committee to stop the calls because federal election law prohibits coordination between the NRCC’s independent expenditures and the candidates they’re supposed to help.
“I’m mad as all get- out,” Souder said. “I would like to run my own campaign without having to deal with them coming in and messing up my life. … I am very upset … I am trying to run a straightforward race. I finally opened up a lead, and they came in with this stuff.”
The independent expenditure arm of the NRCC is spending millions on TV commercials, mailings and phone calls to nudge the outcome of Tuesday’s elections. As long as the committee doesn’t coordinate its activities with a candidate, there are no limits on how much it can spend.
After a second round of calls attacking Hayhurst on Thursday, Souder asked the state attorney general to force the NRCC to stop the telephone campaign.<?b>
The chairman of the Allen County Democratic Party said the calls are automated and, under Indiana law, illegal. But the NRCC, which paid for the calls and wrote the scripts, said the calls are being made by real people. Several people who received calls from the NRCC on Thursday told The Journal Gazette they engaged the caller in conversation.
Nevertheless, Souder said he wants the calls to stop because he disagrees with the tactic. He said his appeal to the NRCC was cut short because he was told it’s illegal for the organization to discuss its activities with candidates.
“There can be no coordination between NRCC independent expenditure program and the candidate,” said Carl Forti, who runs NRCC’s multimillion-dollar independent expenditure operation. The money is being spent on TV ads, phone calls, polls and other activities.
Souder said he called the chairman of the NRCC – Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y. – twice to ask him to intervene. Forti said because Souder talked to Reynolds, it would be illegal for him to change the northeast Indiana phone campaign as a result because the message came from Souder.
Souder said he doesn’t disagree with the content of the calls critical of Hayhurst’s views on immigration and taxation, but “I don’t like this approach to politics. You can do sneak attacks with no public accountability. That’s my problem with messaging phone calls.”
On Thursday, the NRCC calls asked people to vote for Souder because Hayhurst is going to raise the taxes on some small-business owners.
Monday’s calls, some of which reportedly were in Indian and Mexican accents, told the recipients that, “The United States now is home to 11 million illegal immigrants, and the number grows every year. But instead of protecting our borders, congressional candidate Tom Hayhurst supports citizenship opportunities for illegal aliens.”
Souder said his daughter received one of the immigration calls on Monday. He said he listened to it on her answering machine and could barely understand anything except “Hayhurst” because the accent was so heavy.
“Have you ever heard anything more stupid than having somebody whose accent you can’t understand telling you to vote against somebody because they’re for illegal immigration? I have never heard of anything more stupid in my life. It took me somewhere between one second and 60 seconds to be outraged,” he said.
Although organizations that make independent expenditures close to an election are required to report the amount spent within 24 hours, the costs of the two sets of anti-Hayhurst calls have not been filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Forti said expenditures don’t have to be reported until they are completed. But Forti would not say how many more calls the NRCC is planning to make on behalf of Souder or when the telephone campaign will end.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Steve Carter said the office “continues to investigate the situation and will proceed as quickly as the facts allow.”
fortwayne.com |
