AUBURN – Some WGME 13 advertisers are being threatened with a boycott by callers angry over plans by the television station’s owner to air what they view as an anti-John Kerry program.

Two callers – one who said he is from Auburn, and a second from New York who claimed to have relatives in the area – left messages on an answering machine at Pine Works furniture store on Center Street. Both said they’d encourage people to shun the store because it advertises on WGME.

Tricia Brown, the daughter of shop owner Rod Wilson, said the calls infuriate her. She handles Pine Works’ marketing, and made the ad buys with the Portland television station.

“It’s upsetting,” she said of the calls. “We work really hard as a small business.”

WGME was selected for the shop’s advertising, she said, because of its demographics.

“Eighty percent of our customers are women,” added Wilson. “They watch Oprah.’ Our ads run during Oprah.'”

Brown said her TV ad representative told her she’d gotten about 30 similar calls from other advertisers Wednesday morning.

Brown said she’s thinking of asking WGME to add a disclaimer to Pine Works’ ads, noting the business doesn’t support any candidate for president.

“We’re apolitical,” said Wilson.

The first call to the store, logged in at about 9:30 p.m., followed an e-mail sent by the Maine Democratic Party calling on voters “to register their concerns” with WGME over Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s intent to broadcast “Stolen Honor.”

On its Web site, Sinclair calls the program a “special news event” and encourages people to ask Kerry to participate in the broadcast.

Democrats, however, condemn the conservative broadcast group’s intent to show the film in the days or weeks preceding the election.

“Partisan political attacks cloaked as news content are the lowest form of fear and smear tactics,” said Dottie Melanson, chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party in announcing the e-mail campaign aimed at WGME. “Voters across the state should be angry and embarrassed that a station here in Maine would run such partisan drivel so close to an election.”

On Wednesday, however, Melanson disavowed the calls to Pine Works or to other WGME advertisers.

“We never, ever, ever supported or encouraged anyone to boycott a business,” said the state’s Democratic Party chief Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t condone this.”

The callers, she said, must be “individual people angered over Sinclair’s plans” to air the anti-Kerry programming.

She said people should show outrage by contacting WGME 13, as well as Sinclair, and asking that they pull the “misleading and unfortunate special-interest-sponsored campaign commercial.”

Sinclair owns 62 television stations scattered in states around the nation. Of those, 39 offer news programming, with 17 affiliated with Fox News. The others include seven WB associates, six with ABC, three each with CBS and NBC, one with UPN, one independent and one listed as “other.”

Airing the Kerry program isn’t the first time the network took a political stand. It refused to air the ABC “Nightline” program that featured a reading of the names of U.S. service people killed in Iraq.

On Tuesday, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael J. Copps, a Democrat, called Sinclair’s plans for the Kerry program “an abuse of the public trust. And it is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology – whether liberal or conservative.”

Calls for probe

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, was one of 85 Democrats calling on the FCC to launch an investigation into Sinclair’s plans. The congressman said forcing WGME to air the pro-Bush program “shows the danger to our democracy of corporate media consolidation.”

Dan Warner, who does bookkeeping and other office duties with Pine Works, said he has already seen the Kerry program Sinclair will air, and called it trash. A former union organizer, Warner said he considers himself to be liberal. Still, he said, he’s offended by the callers threatening to boycott the store.

“It’s the wrong way to go about things,” he said.

, adding that such threats often backfire.

Wilson was less subtle about what he views as attempt to ruin his livelihood.

“They’re going to boycott my store? How dare they?” he said.