Ring, ring, ring! Robocalls are in season

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Sick of the robocalls yet? You’re not the only one.

Phones are ringing off the hook and will only ring more this week as two big days up ahead. Monday is the deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 14 primary. And Tuesday is when the ABs drop, which means the first batch of absentee ballots go from the Miami-Dade Elections Department to the general mail facility near the airport.

The Hialeah robocall by Miami-Dade Chairman Joe Martinez’s campaign was the first salvo.

If you live in Kendall or Westchester, or other parts of Florida House District 115, you have likely heard one blasting State Rep. Michael Bileca — which the caller pronounces By-leck-uh — for his votes in the last session to raise homeowners insurance and tuition rates at Florida International University. The mispronounced name is part of the message by the call, paid for by supporters of Miami-Dade Schools teacher Geno Perez, who moved from the School Board race against Carlos Curbelo to challenge Bileca because he thinks redistricting favors him there.

Watch Perez cast himself as the true Hispanic, since Bileca isn’t really (though he is married to a Cuban) and the district grew it’s votantes en español and lost some anglos. In fact, this robocall practically outs Bileca as a non-Cuban.

“Who voted to raise your home insurance rates? Representative Michael By-leck-uh,” says the recorded voice of a woman who strangely sounds a little bit like former Miami-Dade Commissioner Natasha Millan.

“Michael By-leck-uh also voted to raise the tuition for our young people at FIU by 15 percent,” she continues. “What does Michael By-Leck-uh think? That we are all millionaires? Call By-leck-uh and tell him that we can’t keep paying more and more.”

Then there’s another dig at his Hispanic cloak: “If you don’t speak English, call with an interpreter, because not everything is as By-leck-uh makes it appear.”

Ouch.

But Perez also has what the pros call a “positive robocall” (if you couldn’t tell, that lase one was a “negative”). The caller is not a Millan sound-alike now but, rather, his wife, Jerry McGibbon Perez, who tells Republican voters to “look closely before you vote.

“Geno Perez has been in public service his entire adult life,” she says about his career in the Marines, law enforcement (he is a former corrections officer) and teacher. Well, in between making kids, that is. “He’s an exemplary father to his five children,” Mrs. Perez says before urging people to vote for her baby daddy times five.

Meow.

If you live in Hialeah or Miami Lakes, you probably got one or two or 23 calls from School Board Member Renier Diaz de la Portilla, a former state rep who wants to go back to Tallahassee representing the new district 103. Except you might think he is running for a seat in Washington D.C. or against President Barack Obama instead of against teacher and tutor Manny Diaz.

“After four years of Obama’s failed policies, we need Renier Diaz de la Portilla,” the caller says, lauding his conservative values. My favorite brother from the same mother, Alex, has the same robocall more or less. Maybe one word changes, other than Renier to Alex. And the number. And while everyone knows the DLPs are trying to gain some of that anti-Obama fever that runs rampant in Cuban Republican circles, Ladra’s actually worried about the very authentic disappointment that will be felt in Little Havana when las viejitas realize you guys aren’t in D.C. (can you see one of them mouthing the word “yet”?)

Hialeah folks may also have gotten a few calls over the last week or so from Paul Crespo, who had one go out on or right before Independence Day wishing everyone a Happy 4th of July, and his mother, Elsa Crespo, who warns voters against the “special interest campaign” by State Rep. Carlos Trujillo (though he is not named by name), who moved to run in 105 so he wouldn’t have to run against State Rep. Frank Artiles (R-119) when both were drawn into the same re-district. Mama Crespo says the other side has tried to discredit her boy, who is “a decent man and a gentleman,” probably talking about the mailer Trujillo sent that reminds people that her good son had a DUI arrest when he tried (and failed) to beat King David “Nine Lives” Rivera in a Republican primary two years ago. Sra. Crespo tells voters that her son has been an adjunct professor at the University of Miami and on radio, and mentions twice that Crespo — who is suddenly going around as Captain Paul Crespo, as if it just occurred to him now that that could be a good idea — is a retired Marine.

That military mettle is something delivered in another robocall for Crespo by former DEA Officer Jim Shedd, who says he and other other law enforcement types support the former Marine. “He has the real life experience needed as a state representative in Florida, unlike his opponent, who recently graduated from law school,” Shedd says in the call. Recently is a relative term. Trujillo was an assistant state attorney in 2007. But Shedd might be right about his experience in politics: The first-term freshman hasn’t had one robocall go out to voters, yet. At least not at the right pace because nobody has complained.

A fourth call for Crespo, who has three calls in English and only his mom’s call in Spanish, slams Trujillo for the homeowners insurance vote the same way Perez slammed Bileca (they do have the same political consultant). “Carlos Trujillo voted with the powerful insurance industry and their army of lobbyists,” the caller says, voice dripping with disdain.

At between 2 and 5 cents a call, automated, pre-recorded robocalls are a great and increasingly used inexpensive tool for candidates to hike their name recognition numbers — or their opponents’ unfavorables. Because you never have to say “vote for” or “vote against” — it’s just implied — they can be paid for out of ECOs, which are PACs in sheep’s clothing because they do the same thing, basically, which is allow people to pour more money into your campaign than the lousy $500 maximum per contributor allowed by those pesky state laws to try to keep one group or special interest or billionaire car salesman from buying an election.

Growl.

Ladra hates PACs. More on them later.

But don’t think Republican candidates have the corner market on robocalls. Waldo Faura, a Democrat running against three other Dems for State Rep. Luis Garcia‘s old seat in the new district 113 (more on that race later), has one that Ladra thinks will work well on the Spanish-speaking voters it targets.

Calling Faura “a fighter” who will cut taxes “that take from the most needy,” the elderly lady, who identifies herself as Alba Valdez on the recorded message. Faura has been an activist working against the insurance industry for years because “he’s an honest man,” she says.

And here’s the vote-clincher: “I’m saying that, and I’m his mother-in-law!”

People will remember that. In fact, they may want to get that call again.