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September 29, 2009 11:02 PM UTC

Did Penry's Spamming Break the Law?

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

We talked a couple of weeks ago about gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry’s delivery of campaign emails to a very large number of unsolicited recipients, including the official addresses of nonpartisan legislative staff and other state employees. At the time, we noted the embarrassing consequences of not checking email lists you acquire from diverse sources for recipients you don’t want (like your opponent’s staff). But we didn’t really think it was, all told, a big deal.

Well folks, we may have been a little premature with our assessment of this as small potatoes. Apparently a number of people have asserted in no uncertain terms that the only email list they could possibly have been subscribed to that Penry would have had access to was the ColoradoSenateNews.com website list, owned by the state-funded Senate Minority Office. As you know, Penry is the Senate Minority Leader, so he (obviously) has access to the list.

But appropriating the resources of the state-funded Senate Minority Office for use on a political campaign would be illegal, wouldn’t it? We, uh, ask rhetorically?

Comments

14 thoughts on “Did Penry’s Spamming Break the Law?

  1. …at band camp….I heard Penry used a Bic Ballpoint pen (black, I think) to write a campaign speech even though it might have been purchased by the State.

    He’s screwed.

    1. That is friggin’ hilarious.  Anyone who has ever spent more than 10 minutes surfing the internet or made a single internet purchase has no idea how many lists they are on.

      I call BS.

      1. Penry is buying random email lists from Amazon and other online merchants (maybe he can buy the ones of folks that bought Atlas Shrugged).?

        Or did ol’ Josh figured out your email address from that time you read an article at denverpost.com?  

        Sure, I guess that’s possible.

      2. I tend to use different e-mail addresses for different lists.

        They all come to a catch-all email account, but I know which list was used to send them.  Or at least which list was bought or stolen.

  2. This reminds me of the most comical incident of the 2008 race for Congress when with no proof Will Shafroth accused Jared Polis of stealing his e-mail list. The charge blew up in Will’s face when he could not provide proof to back it up and was one reason his candidacy went down in flames spending more per vote than Jared did.

    Let’s talk about issues. We all get e-mail from parts unknown.

    1. from many countries in Africa, where I also seem to be the lucky recipient of loads of money from lots and lots of people who have had the rotten misfortune to die in airplane crashes.

  3. Many employees sign up for lists using their State emails. That cannot be put on a candidate.

    But using the email list of the non-partisan staff at the Capitol is a big deal. The problem is that you can never prove it. Just like someone else pointed out, you can pay services to find registered voters emails.

    This will all turn out to be a whole bunch of nothing.

  4. go to http://www.colorado.gov/apps/o… and put in James Carpenter. You get his phone & email.

    When we started marketing to the feds we harvested emails like crazy from the .gov websites to get everyone in the Office of the CIO at each dept & agency. (DHS was the hardest, DOT the easiest.)

    It’s probably fine to throw around as a wild accusation but I sure hope no one files anything because that could easily blow back if Penry can show how they legitimately got it.

  5. I registered my WORK e-mail address with the Colorado Republican Party.  And ONLY the Republican Party. So guess which account now get’s Penry spam??

    Yep – Michael Britt clearly walked with that list, too…

    But hey – all’s fair in love and politics.  

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