Misdialed phone numbers are apparently now grounds to attack your opponent:
Three Central New York television stations have chosen not to run an advertisement from the National Republican Congressional Committee that alleges Michael Arcuri made calls to a sex hotline while at a conference in New York City....
"We rejected the ad," said WKTV Vice President and General Manager Vic Vetters. "This is based on several reviews and discussions with our legal council."
...Documents provided by both the NRCC and the Arcuri campaign show a call lasting less than a minute to an 800 number that is now a sex line.
Arcuri said that number was dialed by accident by Sean Byrne, the executive director of the New York Prosecutor Training Institute, who was meeting with him and others in the hotel room. Byrne also said that was the case, and records show immediately following the call to the sex line, he called the same seven digits, but with a 518 area code, not an 800 prefix.
Wow. Who has the time to look up every one-minute phone call made from a hotel room? And why would they press this when it's so painfully obvious that was a misdialed number, with a 518 call to the same seven digits immediately afterward?
Apparently because they thought it might work, and that they could get away with it. I thought I was pretty numb to the utter lack of respect for truth that seems to come out of Washington's power centers these day, but this is so amazingly petty that it's hard to believe.
To his credit, Meier's asked the NRCC not to run the ad, but I can't say that makes me feel any better about the people he'd be working with if elected.
Yuck.
Update: This appears to be a longer version of the story.
Posted by simon at October 21, 2006 9:29 AM in politics (national)