A rogue robo-caller roused thousands of Coloradans early Thursday with a political pitch for Democratic congressional candidate Bill Winter.
But in the fog of early-morning grogginess, many people heard “Bill Ritter,” the Democrat running for governor – and that’s not the wake-up call they were waiting for.
“I received a 4 a.m. ‘vote for Ritter’ call this morning,” Evergreen resident Tracey Chamberlin wrote in an e-mail to Ritter.
“Either you guys are idiots and can’t tell time, or you have a problem with the Republicans sabotaging your campaign. You better look into it.”
The robo-miscue prompted a game of telephone tag, with Ritter staffers referring angry callers to Trailhead Group, a Republican political committee.
Ritter staffers assumed that the calls were designed to discredit their man, partly because Trailhead has been an aggressive user of robo-calls to attack Democratic candidates for the statehouse.
But Alan Philp, Trailhead’s director, quickly protested that his group had nothing to do with the middle-of-the-night messages.
Trailhead officials asked Ritter’s campaign to quit referring the hostile callers to them.
In the meantime, Bill Winter, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 6th District, published an online apology and accepted blame for the 6,000 early-morning calls.
“I guess I better call Bill, too, and apologize,” Winter said Thursday afternoon.
Winter, who received his own robo-call at 1:17 a.m., spent hours Thursday fielding phone calls from angry voters and vowing that he would not use automated callers again in his campaign.
But escaping all robo-calls may be more difficult than hiding from a clanging alarm clock.
“As we were putting all of these fires out today,” Winter said, “the phone rings and it’s a robo-call from (Democratic secretary of state candidate) Ken Gordon.”
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
