MIAMI - When a man sounding
remarkably like President-elect Barack Obama called a Florida congresswoman
Wednesday, she assumed it was a crank call.

So Republican Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen hung up. But, the Miami Herald reports, this was no prank.

"I thought it was one of the radio
stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on
me," Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. "They got Fidel Castro to go along.
They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no,
I won't be punked.'"

The call came about 1 p.m. Obama
congratulated her on her re-election, saying he was looking forward to working
with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs
committee, Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper.

The conversation lasted about a
minute when she cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and
that he was a better impersonator than the guy on Saturday Night Live, she
said.

Hangs up on Emanuel
too
Then Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, called the
congresswoman to tell her it wasn't a joke. But she hung up on him, too. It took
a call from Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to
persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama really did want to talk to her.

When the two finally talked,
Ros-Lehtinen said she and Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated
him for his victory despite how hard she campaigned for his opponent, Sen. John
McCain.

He didn't even blame her for
mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said.

"He laughed a lot, saying in
Chicago they do it all the time," Ros-Lehtinen said. "He said, 'I don't blame
you for being skeptical.'"

Repeated calls by The Associated
Press to two office numbers for the congresswoman rang unanswered after hours
Wednesday. An e-mail message to an Obama spokeswoman after hours wasn't
immediately returned.

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