Dole Pays $30K to Same Firm Responsible for Obama/Ayers Calls

October 18, 2008

GREENSBORO, N.C. – A New York Times article today confirmed that voters in 10 states, including North Carolina, have received despicable, negative robocalls from the Republican Party and John McCain’s presidential campaign that attempt to tie Barack Obama to Bill Ayers. The company that conducted the robocalls, FLS Connect, also received nearly $30,000 from the Elizabeth Dole campaign in 2008 for telemarketing services, according a July FEC report, raising questions about what kind of telephone calls she is paying for on her behalf in this campaign.

Sen. McCain has refused to denounce the calls, though he blamed his 2000 South Carolina presidential primary defeat in part on offensive robocalls that targeted his family. Republican Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, locked in a tight re-election bid herself, has denounced McCain’s robocalls and urged the McCain campaign to stop placing the calls in Maine. But Elizabeth Dole, who received $1,000 in campaign contributions in 2001 from the owner of FLS Connect, has not condemned the calls.

“Elizabeth Dole needs to come clean – not only about why she is paying this company $30,000, but what exactly she’s paying them for,” said Hagan Campaign Communications Director Colleen Flanagan. “It’s clear they are not in the business of building up their clients, choosing to falsely and disgustingly tear down their opponents instead. Dole’s refusal to denounce these kinds of untruthful and extreme scare tactics is a typical example of her Washington politics that have failed to do anything productive for North Carolina’s hardworking families. In this case, her silence speaks louder than words.”

In April 2008, Dole was also silent on a racist ad run by the North Carolina Republican Party that criticized Sen. Obama for comments made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Sen. McCain denounced that ad, and multiple television stations in North Carolina deemed that the ad was too inappropriate to air. Dole, however, claimed she would not get involved with “refereeing a third party political ad” because she was “concentrating on getting [her] work done here in the Senate.”

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