Call hub waits to unleash shrill script, detached force

By Alexandra Berzon

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Tonya Burks was pulling into a small plaza just west of the Strip Friday when she noticed a group of workers standing outside a call center, known as Advanced Integrated Communications.

Intrigued, she told her boyfriend to go see what was going on. A worker handed him a script of what the employees were to say when they placed their calls.

I’m calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC. You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home, and killed Americans.

Burks, 33, is an Obama supporter and a political junkie who hasn’t been able to find work since she was laid off from her call center job a year ago. When she saw the script, she became outraged by the attempt to connect Obama to terrorism.

“They’re just taking it too far,” she said. Many in the group of 20-odd workers that day told her they, too, were disturbed and would refuse to place the calls, Burks said.

The next day, the Internet and television airwaves were flooded with news of the same script being used in machine-placed calls (known as “robo-calls”) from the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee in swing states across the country.

The robo-calls have been made in Nevada, too. But so far, no one at Advanced Integrated Communications has used the script.

Company owner Joe Roach said he is under contract with the Republican Party to make calls on McCain’s behalf to other states, especially those such as Minnesota that do not allow robo-calls. The callers are to be paid $8 to $10 an hour.

Roach has invested time and money interviewing and training workers. He has space for 200 people at a time.

But he is in waiting mode. He expected to be told weeks ago to start making the calls. It hasn’t happened. He said he was told that some kind of virus mixed up the data of both Democratic and Republican campaigns.

Roach said in an interview this week that what Burks witnessed Friday was the end of a training session. Republican organizers had given him seven possible scripts, but no orders on which would be used. So to prepare workers, he handed them two scripts — the most innocuous, a get out the vote message, and the most extreme, which Burks saw.

“I said, ‘Does anyone have a problem with this?’ ” Roach recalled. “I felt this was the worse one so that’s the one I pulled out at the training. No one said a word.”

Las Vegas, known for its up-all-night workforce, has long been a hub of call centers, a sector that’s become a relative bright spot in the midst of a struggling economy. Last week, AT&T announced that it was moving 350 call center jobs back to Las Vegas from overseas. Roach said he can save companies placing calls to other states $200 to $300 a month because of his long distance deals. When the economy sours, companies looking for a little extra scrimping call on him.

Roach’s call centers are a far cry from the idealized image of a campaign office, filled with harried staffers and enthusiastic volunteers and piles of candidate posters. Only a single nondescript white paper on the door that says “political calling hotline” gives away its maybe-soon-to-be purpose.

Roach says about 80 of the 100 or so people he’s trained are Democrats. But they’re Democrats who, like many others, are struggling.

“They need money so bad they don’t care,” Roach said. “Democrats and Republicans aren’t paying bills right now.”

Roach considers himself an independent Republican, but he will place calls for any political persuasion and has friends who run call centers that are contracted to place calls for Democrats.

“It’s a job,” Roach said. “I’m just trying to get people employed.”

He’s also not a fan of negative phone attacks, even if they do end up providing him with work. His ideal script certainly wouldn’t mention Ayers.

“I think the whole American people are hurting,” Roach said. His request of candidates is: “Tell me what you’re going to do to make it better.”