Bredesen campaign accidentally sent e-mails to state employees
The state Republican Party issued a news release about the e-mails Friday afternoon and it was confirmed by Bredesen campaign spokesman Will Pinkston.
On Wednesday, the e-mail was sent out to more than 90,000 addresses asking for signatures for his nomination petition. Included in that list were more than 300 state e-mail addresses, Pinkston said.
Tennessee law prohibits any public officer knowingly soliciting directly or indirectly a government employee for any type of campaign contribution or using state property for campaign purposes.
The e-mail asked only for supporters to sign the petition and did not explicitly seek any contributions.
“When we realized the problem, we went back and pulled those addresses out of the list,” Pinkston said.
The campaign sent out a second e-mail about two hours later that said the e-mail was not intentional and the accident “runs counter to the campaign’s e-mail policies.”
Pinkston said the campaign realized the problem when a state employee clicked on an “unsubscribe” link on the e-mail, which alerted the campaign that state employees were on the list.
“Of the 300, about half of those were dead e-mail accounts or belonged to state legislators, which are not under the administration,” Pinkston said.
The list was compiled from several databases from sources such as the state Democratic Party and other political organizations, Pinkston said. Those state employee addresses more than likely came from those lists, Pinkston said.
He said that the campaign had a database program that was supposed to weed out e-mail addresses ending in “state.tn.us,” but the program apparently missed some.