NRCC Robo Calls Hitting 20 Districts

[alexey]

Over at TPM, we've been keeping tabs on the robo calls being done by the National Republican Congressional Committee all over the country.

In each case, the calls begin with "Hi, I'm calling with information about [insert local Democratic candidate here]," and then continues to provide negative information about the candidate. Counter to FCC rules, which require that the caller identify themselves early on in the call, the calls only reveal that they are paid for by the NRCC at the end of the call. You can listen to one of these calls (from New York's 19th district) here. There are more than a few reports of voters getting frustrated by repeated calls they believe to be from the Dem candidate. [Update: Here is a recording of someone's glutted answering machine in Tammy Duckworth's district.]

The firm conducting the calls is Conquest Communications, and reviewing the NRCC's independent expenditures filed with the FEC over the past week shows Conquest active in 20 different House races. The full list of expenditures, which includes the incredibly cheap price tags for these calls which reach hundreds of thousands of voters, is below the fold.