I received an email from the Flowers for Treasurer campaign about some possible dirty tricks. The Flowers campaign was getting word from voters that they were receiving late night, early morning and generally annoying phone calls purported to be from his campaign.
Hopefully, each of you saw the Dialogue Delaware story in Sunday’s News Journal regarding unauthorized calls made to likely Democratic primary voters claiming to be from the Flowers for Treasurer campaign. To keep all of you updated, our campaign received our initial complaints while at an event in Kent County last week. Our understanding is that likely Democratic primary voters are being called during dinner time and very late hours from someone stating to be from our campaign office, and once someone complains about the hour of the phone call, the caller hangs up. We believe the purpose of the calls is an early stage effort to manipulate the outcome of the Democratic primary. In short, these calls are not from our campaign office, and we (i) have initiated an investigation, (ii) are filing a complaint with the Delaware Department of Elections and (iii) will take legal action (civil and criminal) as this type of behavior will not be tolerated in this race. Chip has placed personal calls to both his opponents in the race, who have denied any involvement in the calls. Our campaign has initiated security measures with respect to our calling system and additional details will be announced at a later date.
However, to clarify, our campaign does not call outside of the late morning and early afternoon timeframe. It is a guideline within our campaign office to not call during meals or evening hours as your personal time is important to you and your family. Also, the phone numbers authorized from our campaign for outgoing calls are 302-656-7360 and 302-656-7390. We never call from a “blocked” telephone number or a number from outside the State of Delaware.
This race is getting nasty. I thought Delaware was resistant to this type of dirty politics but perhaps I was wrong.