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Monday, July 31, 2006
 Campaign Hijinks: Political Tactics May Signal Bruising GOP Congressional Race
Marie Price
The Journal Record
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma politics can be contentious at times, but this year’s 5th Congressional District Republican race may set the bar even higher – or lower, given your perspective.
One series of automated phone calls about Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode and Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin has already generated an attorney general’s investigation, and a radio ad and phone “spamming” incident may spark another.
Attorney General Drew Edmondson is looking into the last-minute phone calls, identified as being from Americans for Job Security, although they did not include a contact telephone number.
AJS President Michael Dubke acknowledged Friday that his nonprofit business organization sponsored the calls, but he doesn’t believe a federal telephone consumer protection law covers them.
Both Dubke and Sean McCaffrey, with Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett’s campaign, said they thought the probe was concluded.
Edmondson spokesman Charlie Price said that’s not the case.
“The investigation is continuing,” said Price. “We’ll follow the evidence wherever it leads us.”
One call alleges that Bode pushed for a 125-percent fuel tax hike, reportedly a reference to a federal fuel tax increase in the early 1980s, and refers to her as a “former liberal Democrat.” Bode was once a Democrat.
Bode’s campaign spokesman Ron Black termed the tax-hike-support allegation “patently false.”
“That didn’t happen,” he said.
Black said that when Bode was president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, she fought against a Clinton administration BTU gas tax hike.
Black said Bode is fiscally conservative, terming the allegations in the phone call “ridiculous.”
Fallin and Cornett will face off in an Aug. 22 runoff.
The other phone call refers to doctors leaving Oklahoma because they can’t afford liability insurance, terming it the “Mary Fallin legacy.”
When asked why doctors leaving the state should be laid at a lieutenant governor’s door, Dubke said he didn’t write the script for the ad and would “have to look at my notes.”
Asked whether anyone in Oklahoma requested that AJS make the calls, Dubke said, “I don’t recall exactly the Oklahoma situation. Frankly, I don’t want to get into how we make our decisions on the stuff that we do.”
McCaffrey, with Wilson Research Strategies, was asked whether WRS or the Cornett campaign had anything to do with the phone calls.
“Absolutely not,” he replied. “I don’t even know Mr. Dubke and I don’t know Americans for Job Security.”
McCaffrey said he has offered to stand with the other campaigns and denounce the AJS messages.
Bill Greener, president of Greener and Hook, a Virginia consulting firm that did advertising for Cornett, said his firm did one television ad for AJS in 2004, but he has had no contact with them since.
“Not only didn’t we have anything to do with the phone calls, we don’t do phone calls,” Greener said.
McCaffrey said he intends to bring a couple of other situations to the attorney general’s attention after the election.
Denise Northrup, with Fallin’s campaign, said she informed McCaffrey of a radio ad that ran a couple of weeks ago, purporting to be a news account, in which Fallin criticized Cornett for taking credit for leading the effort to insure that children could not have access to gay-themed books in libraries.
Northrup said the Fallin campaign had nothing to do with the ad.
“We got phone calls from angry moms with children,” she said.
The ad ended with the tag line “Thank you for listening to the Oklahoma Political News Service” and “Paid for by Oklahomans for Traditional Marriage.”
On its Web site, OPNS denounced the ad as an impersonation of the news service in a letter to a radio station that ran the spot.
McCaffrey said the ad was pulled by two of the stations after it ran a few times.
Harold Patterson, general sales manager of KKNG and KOJK radio in Oklahoma City, said the ad was pulled temporarily off of Radio Disney because it violated Disney rules by mentioning the term “homosexuals.”
“Once it was corrected, then we put it back on,” Patterson said.
Patterson said the station received calls from both the Fallin and Cornett campaigns about the ad.
Consultant Kirk Shelley declined to name the woman who initiated the ad, saying she has a relative who works for Oklahoma City and fears retaliation.
Shelley said the ad quotes from news releases about a spat over who led the fight to remove the books from children’s access.
“All of the information in the ad either came from the media or the press release everybody had already signed anyway,” Shelley said.
McCaffrey indicated he may bring the ad and a telephone “spamming” incident to Edmondson’s attention.
He said that beginning the day before the primary election, the Cornett campaign office started receiving a deluge of telemarketing calls for sales of campaign-related pens, signs and other items.
“Some person with far too much time got online and subscribed Mick Cornett to receive telemarketing calls from every campaign service telemarketer on this side of the Mississippi,” he said. “That’s a felony. That one’s jail time.”
Although he lost his sense of humor after about the 45th call, McCaffrey said an offer of 45,000 Cornett beer Koozies “cracked me up.”
McCaffrey said he will ask the attorney general to trace the Internet incident, because he has asked all of the vendors for their contact information and data on the referral service that sent the Cornett contact information to them.
“They’re a clever felon, but a felon nonetheless,” McCaffrey said. “But I have no idea who’s behind them.”
McCaffrey was also critical of a purported political flyer carrying the names of Fallin, Cornett and fellow candidate Fred Morgan bearing the logo of a local church, which had nothing to do with the flyer.
He said an incident like that could jeopardize the church’s tax-exempt status.
“To attack a church – who does that?” he asked.
Posted at 7/31/2006 04:18:00 PM  
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