Early morning campaign phone solicitations - held up as proof of sleaziness in the recent commissioner of insurance campaign - were a mistake, a Public Service Commission investigation found.

A computer was set to start automatically dialing 40,000 homes with recorded messages urging voters to vote for anybody but Jim Donelon at 6 p.m., said Brenda Headlee of the PSC on Thursday.

But a mechanical error instead caused the calls to go out at 6 a.m. on Sept. 22, Headlee reported to the five elected commissioners who regulate utilities in Louisiana.

About 700 pre-dawn calls went out before the computer shut down, she said.

The PSC launched an investigation after awakened voters complained. The pre-dawn attack calls were prominent in a litany of complaints that Donelon called "cheap political tricks" on the part of his opponent, state Sen. James David Cain, D-Dry Creek.

Donelon won the Sept. 30 election by pulling 1,388 more votes than Cain and another candidate attracted together.

"I don't think there was anything sinister involved," said Headlee, general manager of the PSC's Do Not Call office.

The PSC is considering sanctions against the company, called Watson Voice & Data Transmission Communications Co. of New Orleans. The fines could exceed $1 million.

Jeff Giles, Watson's chief executive officer, said he realizes his company may have to pay a fine for the calls made prior to 8 a.m., which violated the PSC's "Do Not Call" regulations. He said he hopes the commissioners exercise their sanctioning discretion because the calls were accidental and not malicious.

"I don't do dirty tricks," said Giles, who described himself as a friend of Donelon's.

Giles said in an interview that logs of the calls show that Cain's attack message went out the night before between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Then, for some reason, the program restarted at 6 a.m. the following morning.

Since that discovery, Giles said, the company installed a mechanism that better controls the time the calls are made.

"We need some stiff penalties on that, regardless of whether it's intentional or not intentional," said PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell of Bossier City. "That's a sneaky way to do business."

Charlie Davis, who ran Cain's campaign, said in a Thursday interview that he thought from the very beginning that it was a mistake on the part of a vendor rather than political skullduggery. "It had nothing to with the campaign," Davis said.

The "Do Not Call" rules forbid phone calls between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. and prohibits use of automated dialing equipment if the identity of the caller is not provided within 25 seconds of the time the call is answered. The fines are $1,500 per call to anyone under 65 who was called and $3,000 per call to anyone 65 or older.

Amy Whittington, a deputy commissioner of insurance who took leave to work on Donelon's campaign, said Thursday that she understands about the mechanical breakdown. But she said, "It would be good to see further investigation" into whether the recorded message identified the Cain campaign as its sponsor. "If you're going to attack, at least have the guts to say who are," she said. "We're hoping they'd address that as well."

"That's a problem for the Cain campaign," said Watson's Giles. The company provides a mechanism to place telephone calls but does not advise candidates on the content of the message. The recorded message did not identify Cain as the sponsor, he said.

PSC Commissioner Jay Blossman of Mandeville said, "You start fining them, what, $1,500 times 700? Guess what? That message will start identifying themselves. ... You'll stop some of these shenanigans."