The "Wisconsin Freedom Phones" Call Center in the Minneapolis Hilton
by Abe Sauer
“The Wisconsin phone center is open,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips in his opening remarks on Saturday, just before conservative speakers Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann addressed the attendees of the RightOnline conference. Before turning it over to the headliners, Phillips further encouraged the crowd of 1500 to “take a break during some point in the day” and “go over and look at the script, try a couple.”
Philips closed by asking everyone if they were “willing to stand with Scott Walker.”
Next to the testimony room, on the third floor of the the Minneapolis Hilton, the “Wisconsin Freedom Phones” call center operated for both days of the RightOnline conference on June 17 and 18. The script used in the for the calls consisted of only two questions. For just two questions, they said a lot.
RightOnline is a project of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and is dedicated to “advancing liberty and prosperity for all Americans through greater citizen participation online.” Founded in 2008, RightOnline is a boot camp for training conservative activists in both Internet activism and ideology. Breakout sessions include Twitter 101, Advanced Twitter, Becoming an Effective Citizen Journalist, Protecting Yourself Online: Internet Security Issues for Activists, Legal Issues Related to Online Activism, Citizens Interacting with Congress Online, and Detecting & Countering Left-wing Media Bias (taught by ACORN-busting “pimp” videographer James O’Keefe).
The goal of the conference is, in part, to take ideological conservatives and teach them the online and social media skills they need to all become @patriotusa76, the still-mysterious Twitter user that brought down Congressman Weiner.
One training session — “Youth Outreach, Not all Students are Liberal” — taught a room of adults about how to create activists in high schools. One of its panelists was 15-year-old Tricia Willoughby; many Wisconsinites may remember Willoughby as the youth speaker at the Madison Tea Party rally who was so energetically defended by conservative blogger Ann Althouse.
So: the two questions. First, after identifying oneself as calling from Americans for Prosperity, the callers were instructed to ask: “Who do you plan to vote for in the upcoming election?”
Then, a second question: “Do you support or oppose Governor Walker’s budget repair plan which reforms the way government workers collectively bargain?”
Herbert Kritzer, the political science professor and the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, says the script is “not the kind of blunt instrument one sees in many push polls.” He adds that it’s “on the margin” and “reflects a particular perspective (use of the term ‘reform’ rather than ‘limit’).”
But a straight push poll may not have been the goal of AFP’s RightOnline call center.
The AFP call center’s “Frequently Asked Questions: Wisconsin Recall Elections in 2011” document, which was given to call center volunteers, included as one of the “talking points” directions for call center operators to answer the question “Who is the Republican? Who is the Democrat?” It instructed the volunteer RightOnline callers to “go ahead and inform them… but be careful not to show any support or opposition for either Party.”
AFP is a 501(c)(3) organization, and as such, according to the IRS, is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” Like most tea party organizations, it bills itself as non-partisan.
Instead, the way the calls and data fields were structured, it’s more likely that what the call center was meaning to do was to confuse voters about the candidates in the upcoming recall elections.
One of the call center administrators allowed me to sit down and look at the program used. The drop down input for the first general question, about which candidate the voter would choose, included both the recalled Republican, the Democrat challenger and the “spoiler” Democrat placed to force a primary election. So, for example, those making calls to District 32 around La Crosse were told to inform voters that their choices in the upcoming election included (incumbent) Republican Dan Kapanke, Democrat Jennifer Shilling or Democrat James Smith. (James Smith is a former Republican official now running as a Democrat to force an unnecessary Democratic primary.)
Of the questions asking which candidate the voter would choose, nothing was noted to differentiate primaries from general elections. Volunteers made no distinction between the July primaries and the August general elections, yet at the same time read off the names off candidates from both parties.
Asked about Americans for Prosperity, a spokesman for Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board told us that it is GAB policy not to comment on any complaints it receives.
The call center was not the only Wisconsin recall-focused initiative at RightOnline. One session was titled “States in Fiscal Crisis: Reforming State Collective Bargaining.”
A special session Friday afternoon titled “WI Brainstorming Session with State Director Matt Seaholm” featured the AFP Wisconsin head stressing to the audience that winning the recall elections was paramount, because if the Democrats win, “they will smell blood” and immediately go after Governor Walker. Seaholm said that if “the conservative majority remains intact” after the recalls, “it’s going to be tough for them to take that lack of momentum and restart an effort to get 500,000 signatures.”
(If anyone is smelling blood, it’s Seaholm. That same day, The Progressive published a piece of disgusted barf in which its editor Matthew Rothschild wrote, “The mass protests that I expected this week at the capitol in Madison did not materialize. On Tuesday, there were maybe 5,000 people there. On Thursday, barely 1,000. I’m sorry, but that was pathetic.”)
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“As more and more protesters come in from Nevada, Chicago and elsewhere, I am not going to allow their voices to overwhelm the voices of the millions of taxpayers from across the state who think we’re doing the right thing.”
Those words from Gov. Scott Walker, spoken in February, were just the beginning of a campaign to pin the protests and outrage over the budget bill on out-of-state influence. In the months since, Walker has continued to bang this gong. He went on Fox News to warn outside agitators to “stay out of the state’s business” and he has regularly used his Scott Walker Twitter account (not the Governor’s account) to lambaste the out-of-state “union bosses” trying to influence the recall elections.
American for Prosperity was a huge supporter of Walker’s campaign, as well as highly active during his original budget proposal. They ran a “Stand with Walker” campaign, and sent pro-Walker protesters to the Capitol for tea party counter rallies.
Later in the afternoon on Saturday, just before Tim Pawlenty took the stage to recite an anecdote about his family’s trip to Wisconsin Dells, who was in the call center working the phones but the entire Willoughby family, including now-15-year-old Tricia.
At least she’s from Wisconsin.
Abe Sauer’s full report on RightOnline’s Internet boot camp is at Esquire. He can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.