Clinton-Linked Group Behind Deceptive North Carolina Robo-Calls

Southern Studies:

Who's behind the mysterious "robo-calls" that have spread misleading voter information and sown confusion and frustration among North Carolina residents over the last week?

Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women's Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among "unmarried women voters."

Read the whole story: Southern Studies

Comments

[karaplanet]

It was the VA state police that investigated and found who was behind the calls in VA. The calls had the ID blocked. At first, they thought that it was an potential identity theft/ fraud case....

[ApolloniaCreed]

Why was this taken off the front Page???

[ApolloniaCreed]

What does it take for MSM to report this? The double-standard in so-called journalism in this country is ASTOUNDING!

[karaplanet]

They have 20 truckloads of mailings on their way to NC voters presently. They say that they have stopped 5, not sure about the rest. All due to hit mailboxes less than a week before primary day.

[karaplanet]

Women's Voices Executive Director Joe Goode worked for Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1992 as a pollster; the group's website says he was intimately involved in "development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns" for Clinton.

Women's Voices board member John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, donated $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on April 19, 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org.

990 tax return for WVWV for 2006
WVWV is a 501 c 3 organization which means they cannot do anything to support a particular candidate.
WVWV spent $88,842.00 for "strategic planning" from Griffin William CPM. ?Maggie Williams company They also spent $225,854.00 on polling and focus groups from Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research. Why would a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to voter registration have to spend that kind of money on focus groups?

There is also a company called Woman Voices Women Votes Action Fund which is a 501(c)(4). The same people seem to be on both boards.

[karaplanet]

The organization which did the robo-calls that mislead on voter registration in NC and elsewhere is the Women's Voice Women's Vote with its website at wvwv.orgg". That domain is registered as:

Registrant ID:42386600-NSI
Registrant Name:Womens Voices. Women Vote
Registrant Organization:Womens Voices. Women Vote
Registrant Street1:1707 L Street NW
Registrant Street2:Suite 750
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Washington
Registrant State/Province:DC
Registrant Postal Code:20036

The same suite is used by the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

Institute for Women's Policy Research
1707 L Street, NW, Suite 750
Washington, DC 20036

The President of that organization is Heidi Hartmann. She is also a signee of the manifest Feminists for Clinton as is the Vice President & Director of Research of the Institute for Women's Policy Research Barbara Gault

cont'd .....

[karaplanet]

Leadership Team
Page S. Gardner, Founder and President, WVWV
Joe Goode, Executive Director, WVWV
Ruth Ferguson, Chief Finance Officer, WVWV
Nancy McDonald, Resource Development Director, WVWV
Hal Malchow, President, MSHC Partners
Pat Griffin, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management
Maggie Williams, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management

Directors
Page S. Gardner, Founder and President, WVWV
Ashley James, Student Activist, De Paul University
Michael Lux, President, American Family Voices
Mimi Mager, Partner, Heidepriem & Mager
John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
Margaret Rheinstein, Community Activist

Advisory Board
Chair - Barbara Lee, RW
Patricia Bauman
Heather Booth
Chris Desser
Anna Greenberg
Anne Hess
Richard Plepler
Ruth Skovron
Gloria Steinem
WVWV Legal Counsel

Holly Schadler, Lichtman, Trister & Ross, PLLC

look who their legal counsel is. Schadler, a former Sierra Club official, is an operator for the Clinton White House. She, along with Robert Bauer and Judith Corley--two other partners at Perkins Coie--incorporated the Back to Business Committee, set up in 1994 by Lynn Cutler and Ann Lewis (Democratic Party operators) to defend Bill and Hillary.

http://eatthestate.org/03-38/NaturePolitics.htm

[Independent voter]

clinton = scum

[Alyscha]

Now that we have this new information, i think we should go back and take a closer look at the New Hampshire primary....

[ntmessage]

This is complete BS since this companies management also has Obama supporter employed there as well. Just telling half the story to smear Clinton is really despicable.

[modmom]

If you are really interested in the truth then take a look at who sits on their boards-it even contains Maggie William and many other former clinton Administration personnel.

Why would a group advocating voting of women use a male voice "sounding like James Earl Jones", use the name Lamont Williams, and place calls to Af Am men? Why would a well funded group make the same repeated mistakes on registration deadlines in state after state when a couple call to the state's SOS would have provided the group with correct information? Why would they not disclose who they were? and why would they use a number that could not be viewed? (both illegal)

[ntmessage]

Point is that Obama supporters are on the board as well. Lame argument.

[karaplanet]

No one is trying to smear Clinton. EVERY voter should be appalled by this practice, no matter who their candidate is. If you are not incensed, after looking at all of the evidence, I would question your ethics and motives as well.

[truthyguy]

I know. Hillary can't control or be responsible for everything people who support her do.
She is very sorry for this but can't apologize or rectify the situation with corrective robo calls because she had nothing to do with it and it would distract from her campaign to save the little people she has all of a sudden become the champion for.

[bentenrai]

She could tell them to refrain doing stupid stuff like that on her behalf though, it reflects badly on her. I haven't heard her making a statement about it.

[ApolloniaCreed]

Maggie Williams is on the board and her campaign manager... she was Hillary's press secretary in her days in the White House... How much more of a direct connection do you need with the campaign for this to be a MSM story...

If BO's, second cousin's, uncle's, friend's shared an office building with this group, it would all over the news, and Chris Matthew would pretend he is perplexed and then outraged! And later ask how this will affect the "blue-collar" voters he's so familiar with...

[CTmom13]

Good ole say anything do anything politics as usual by Clinton
North Carolina AG Opens Investigation of Robo Calls
By Paul Kiel - April 30, 2008, 6:22PM
And yet another development on those calls by Women's Voices Women Vote.

North Carolina's attorney general has just put out a press release (pdf) saying that he's investigating the calls and taking credit for having them stopped. "Regardless of the motivation, the robo-calls violated the law and they needed to stop," Roy Cooper said. He also includes a correspondence with the group's lawyer. In the letter, Cooper requests a variety of information about the calls.

Sarah Johnson, the group's spokeswoman declined to comment on the correspondence, referring questions to the group's lawyer. But she did say that the calls occurred last Thursday and Friday in North Carolina as they did in all the other 24 states (pdf) targeted by the group this April.

[WIDESTANCE]

"We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused."
-- page gardner, veteran political strategist and founder of WVWV
===============================================

ms. gardner

has your "non-partisan" organisation apologised to voters in

ARIZONA
COLORADO
WISCONSIN
MICHIGAN
FLORIDA
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
KENTUCKY
and OHIO

where you have employed the same highly questionable and barely legal (if not actually illegal) tactics to confuse and disenfranchise voters ???

ALONG WITH YOUR TEAM OF SOPHISTICATED AND HIGHLY SKILLED POLITICAL OPERATIVES, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING, WHY YOU ARE DOING IT AND WHAT THE INTENDED CONSEQUENSES ARE

YOUR "APOLOGY" IS LAUGHABLE AND MEANINGLESS

[Daisy1111]

You guys are funny.

[metropolitan]

here's a great ABC news story about these robocalls from yesterday, before they knew it was you who did it.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4756048&affil=wabc

that's so cool! a tv news story about how this mysterious evil voter confusion calls are being made and how they want to track them down so bad and bust them! and it's you!