Where’s Becky?
She’s been calling me at home with the lowdown on Gov. Jennifer Granholm, accompanied by sighs of disappointment.
“Hi. This is Becky,” she said cheerfully last month, when she first filled me in on what she called Granholm’s “broken promises on the environment” — a ban on shoreline sand mining that hadn’t happened.
I was intrigued and would have called back, except Becky didn’t leave her last name or affiliation, and the caller ID listed her number as a series of zeroes.
The next day, a man called, sounding like a friend of Becky’s. He said he was an Asian-American. “Have you heard the governor’s negative campaign against Dick DeVos?” And then, without waiting for an answer, he huffed about being “offended” and fretted about what to tell his children.
Becky and her “Asian-American” friend both sounded chatty and intimate and, I thought, that for tele-robots, they projected a lot of emotion.
Callers ramp up ‘disgust’
While I didn’t have their number they definitely had mine — the shoreline-loving mother of an Asian-American.
A few days ago, Becky called again. (”Remember?”) Her disappointment had now blossomed into full-blown “disgust” with Granholm’s “attacks” on Dick DeVos’ family.
Becky’s messages stick in your head, like your mother’s reminders to brush your teeth, but she vanishes. So I decided to track her down. I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
At the state Republican Party headquarters, staff members deny any knowledge of a “Becky,” in any form, human, automated or vegetable. Communications Director Sarah Anderson says, “We’re not doing any robo-calls right now.” She can’t provide information about Becky, or Becky’s Asian-American friend, either. Assuming “he” really is Asian-American.
DeVos camp confirms tack
At DeVos’s campaign headquarters in Lansing, a staff member named Katy said the office had been doing robo-calls. Here’s an excerpt:
We don’t have anyone on our staff whose name is Becky.
But she keeps calling.
We can take your name off the list.
I don’t want to be off the list. I just want to talk to Becky.
I’m sorry.
Becky seems to know a lot about me so I’d like to know something about her.
I understand.
Can you tell me if I’m on the list?
No, I can’t tell you if you’re on the list. All I can do is remove you from the list. It’s a very complicated process.
In a final attempt to locate my new telefriend, I call Alex Gage, the founder of TargetPoint Consulting Inc. Gage, a Detroit-area native, and his market research firm have sold the Michigan Republican Party reams of data on Michigan voters, including me, that involve enhancing voting lists by culling information from places like American Express and Amazon.com.Gage said he doesn’t know what happens to that data after his firm categorizes voters into 42 groups. Like Becky, Gage has got my number. And probably yours. But he cannot tell me a thing about the woman I’m looking for.
“Who’s Becky?” he asks.
