September 11, 2009 06:30 PM UTC

Josh Penry, Spammer

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports, though maybe you already know about it:

Some state Capitol workers received a blast e-mail Thursday from Republican Josh Penry’s gubernatorial campaign, fueling speculation that the lawmaker was using government e-mail lists for election purposes.

Not at all, said Penry’s campaign manager, Mike Britt.

Britt said the campaign asked supporters – including lawmakers and lobbyists – to share their distribution lists. That could be how the campaign ended up with e-mail addresses to state government accounts, he said.

Penry’s message was sent on his private campaign account. And while not illegal, the mass distribution was seen by some as a breech of statehouse protocol.

House Speaker Terrance Carroll called the incident a “rookie mistake.”

“I personally would not have sent it to people’s state e-mail accounts,” Carroll, D-Denver, said. “Those accounts are not intended for campaign junk mail, and it puts people in a tough position when you send these things to Republicans, Democrats and everybody’s mama.”

Among those who received the e-mail: nonpartisan legislative staffers; Katie Reinisch, spokeswoman for the House Democrats; and Jim Carpenter, chief of staff for Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter…

Don’t freak out too much, the practice of freely exchanging (or selling) email lists between candidates is ubiquitous, as anybody’s whose ever put themselves on a single candidate’s list knows very well–privacy policies be damned. And it’s not against the law to send electioneering emails to a government address, sending electioneering emails from one would be the problem.

That said, there is something that folks on the data end of political campaigns call “list hygiene”–merging and cleaning up all these lists you’ve accumulated before you slap them into your database. Part of that, for future reference, should include removing campaign email blast recipients who might be problematic for various reasons, like your opponent’s chief of staff. Go ahead and sort out all the @state.co.us addresses while you’re at it, just to avoid any further “misunderstandings,” which–shocker!–tend to happen more often when you spam the enemy.

But cut Josh Penry some slack this time we guess, rookies do these things.