O'Brien campaign defends phone offensive

Larry O'Brien's mayoral campaign says it has no plans to pull a sourly received telephone offensive targeted at thousands of Ottawa voters.

The campaign's automated phone calls have upset many residents, with several complaining about them online and another mayoral candidate labelling them offensive.

"Hi. It's Larry O'Brien calling," a recording begins. "This election is your chance to send a message to Jim Watson and his Toronto friends."

Several recipients said they couldn't hang up and use their phones for another call once the taped message started. A YouTube video shows a man apparently trying in vain for more than 20 minutes to hang up on a telephone "town hall" meeting, basically a massive conference call featuring O'Brien.

Some of the calls feature a so-called push poll, where the automated message asks loaded survey-style questions.

"I would certainly think poorer of any candidate relying on these automated methods rather than getting out the vote in more traditional ways," said voter Tim Wayne, who has an "Anybody but Larry" sign on his lawn and received a push-poll call from the mayor.

But O'Brien campaign strategist Dimitri Pantazopoulos rejects the criticism that the so-called "robo-calls" are impersonal, saying they're like "door-knocking on speed."

"Nothing could be less impersonal than receiving a call from the mayor of Ottawa. It's the ultimate in personal, and he's touching a lot of people in their homes."

The poll calls also have people perturbed at a glaring linguistic lapse. They mispronounce mayoral candidate Clive Doucet's last name as the French-sounding doo-SAY.

"He's playing to a division which is latent in our society," Doucet said Thursday. "It's underneath there, and it's ugly, it's very ugly, and he shouldn't be doing it."

Pantazopoulos said the slip-up was an honest mistake that will be corrected.

"The whoops on Mr. Doucet's name was definitely a whoops. But here's the thing: his name is spelled C-E-T, which in a French pronunciation would be say."