Hired Gun Political Telemarketer in Iowa Talks re Giuliani and Clinton

[Adelante]

This is extremely interesting, because the guy made calls to Repukes in the morning and later in the day to Dems. Look at the comparison. He no longer does this work. He's decided to caucus for Dodd, he says.

Former Political Hired Gun Discusses Life in an Iowa Call Center
by: Lynda Waddington
Monday (12/31/07) at 14:15 PM

-snip

The Iowa-based telemarketing company Hedges worked for was hired, by way of a Washington, D.C.-based marketing firm, to do fund-raising calls on behalf of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican front-runner in the presidential race. The company was subsequently also hired to do identification and outreach calls on behalf of the campaign for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrat ranking highest in national polling. The calls went out to households in Iowa as well as several eastern states.

-snip

While Hedges couldn't remember the entire Giuliani pitch verbatim, he said there were certain aspects that stuck out in his mind such as telling people that the nation "couldn't afford to have a Democrat, like Hillary Clinton, in the White House."

"Sometimes we would switch up Clinton for Obama, but it would always be one of the big Democratic front runners," he said. "In fund raising, you are standing up. You're passionate. You've got to make these people believe that Rudy is the savior -- even at the expense of the person you know you might be pitching for later in the same day."

-snip

"It was different when we were doing the Clinton calls because we didn't have the team leaders walking around. People weren't screaming," he said. "It was definitely more relaxed -- more of a real conversation with the people on the other end of the line."

The conversation would begin with Hedges identifying himself and saying that he was calling on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Then the person on the other end would be asked if he or she supported Clinton. If the answer was yes, Hedges would feign excitement. If the answer was no, he'd be more subdued and immediately turn the conversation back to Clinton.

"We didn't really talk about other candidates at all, except to ask who the person was supporting," he said. "If the person wanted to talk about another choice, we'd work to bring the focus back on Clinton, her plans, policies and stances on the issues. As I said, it wasn't a high-energy sales call, it was soft and relaxed. We wanted to give information and get information. That was the goal."

http://www.iowaindependent.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1755