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Not minding their P’s and Q’s

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Illinois

This isn’t exactly indictment-worthy, but third party candidates need to remember that the laws apply to them, too.

Green Party governor hopeful Rich Whitneyâ€™s campaign manager at times uses a public universityâ€™s computer system to help run Whitneyâ€™s third-party bid, something a leading ethical watchdog said is a clear violation of state law.

State ethics laws forbid the use of taxpayer-supported, government resources for political use. â€œA public university is an arm of government,â€ said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Still, Whitney campaign manager Jennifer Roseâ€™s Southern Illinois University e-mail has been used for campaign purposes ranging from contacting reporters to helping track turnout at Green Party events. Whitney, a Carbondale lawyer, will appear on the statewide ballot along side Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Republican nominee Judy Baar Topinka.

Rose said Monday night she was unaware there was a problem.”In no way did I think that I was doing anything wrong or something that violated ethics, but I will certainly check on it immediately,” she said. […]

Rose recently used the SIU e-mail account to send a message to the Daily Herald complaining that Whitney wasnâ€™t included in a story about how the George Ryan scandal could affect this yearâ€™s governorâ€™s race.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 10:10 am

Comments

FWIW, she also has a whitneyforgovernor.org address. I went and double-checked my emails from her.

But yeah, don’t do that.

Comment by RickG Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 10:12 am
Er, that should be whitneyforgov.org . My bad.

Comment by RickG Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 10:12 am
Come on you Rod Bashers, where are you with your moral outrage and comments about this. If this was Rod’s guys doing this you would all be screaming for a fed. investigation into the use of state property for politics. I can’t hear you.

Comment by Anon Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 12:56 pm
Yeah, she shouldn’t do this. But it’s a lot like complaining that some guy at Enron took home a stapler.

Comment by the Other Anonymous Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 1:30 pm
Actually, there is nothing illegal about this. The ethics law to which this reporter is referring only applies to legislators and state employees. He’s uninformed, and it’s libelous. Rich Whitney’s campaign manager is a STUDENT, and her tuition pays for her email account–not taxpayer dollars. According to what this reporter is saying, the college Democrats and Republicans on every campus throughout the state are guilty of breaking the same non-existant, non-citable law.

Comment by Squideshi Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 1:41 pm
If tuition paid for everything at SIU and other colleges then they wouldn’t need to go to Springfield and beg for money. Everyone’s income and sales taxes help foot the bill at the state’s universities. That’s how public schools work.

Comment by anon Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 1:49 pm
The writer of the original article didn’t do any actual research into the law, and when he contacted the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, he didn’t even represent the situation accurately. He asked for an opinion without providing complete information - probably because he didn’t *have* complete information and just chose to bull ahead with his story anyway, feigning moral indignation.

The real story here is that a reporter didn’t do his job and instead put together an article of such dubious journalistic integrity that it should call into question his credentials.

For more background on this, I recommend work done by John K. Wilson:

http://www.ilaaup.org/news/IllinoisAcademe/2004_fall/Threats.html

http://www.illinoistimes.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A3870

Comment by Phil Huckelberry (ILGP Co-Chair) Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:09 pm
Somebody is REALLY desperate if this is this biggest ethics violation they can find against the Greens.
Hey, I think I heard one of them use a swear word once! Maybe this is the right time to have an “Ethics Forum” & invite all THREE certified candidates to debate campaign ETHICS, I wonder who would win (or even be brave enough to show!)

Comment by Alicia Snyder Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:17 pm
Like the way that before getting on the ballot, the Green’s simple existance was blown off as not worth discussing. Now that they have got a fingerhold, the search for anything negative has begun. This is almost a “welcome to the party” whack to the back of the head. Do they have to follow the rules? Sure. They should follow them as closely as the other major candidates have followed them. Is there an existing politician in office that has followed every tiny detail, of every single rule to everyone’s satisfaction where the other side can’t find some juicy nugget that explains why they are unfit for office?

Comment by zatoichi Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:30 pm
Quote from Illinois Times article cited by Green Huckelberry:

But other parts of the training are more alarming. The ethics training advises that university employees “may not start or circulate a petition in support of a particular candidate or political issue, or give money or hand out campaign literature on behalf of a particular candidate or issue. Violate any of these rules and you could be fined, lose your job, or even go to jail.” This means a professor teaching a class about political campaigns is banned from handing out campaign literature and threatened with jail.

What’s so alarming about prohibiting university staff from using taxpayer-subsidized resources to work political campaigns?

It’s perfectly reasonable. If it’s not illegal to use state-susidized resources to work a political campaign, it certainly flies in the face of common sense and decency.

If it’s absolutely essential for a university employee or student to work a political campaign, then he or she can sign up for stupid f&%$ing free e-mail account with Yahoo or any number of other services.

It takes about two and half minutes - probably less - to sign up and send your first e-mail.

Making the case that it’s somehow crucial for a university employee or student to have taxpayer-subsidized resources at his or her disposal when working a political campaign is just silly, Green Huckelberry.

Is it any wonder that nobody in this state is viewing your party as a serious threat, or that the Daily Herald reporter didn’t bother calling your gubernatorial candidate for comment about the impact of George Ryan.

It’s as silly, in fact, or your so-called campaign worker/SIU student not having a clue.

Comment by DeepFriedOnAStick Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:51 pm
Phil Huckelberry decides to hound the media rather than address the actual issue, which is using state resources for campaign purposes. Maybe we should treat the Greens like the major parties… he sure seems to have their patter down pat.

Comment by Fredbyrrd Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:51 pm
These kind of things happen when you have a student run your campaign.

Comment by taxmandan Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 2:56 pm
Correction:

Itâ€™s as silly, in fact, as your so-called campaign worker/SIU student not having a clue.

Comment by DeepFriedOnAStick Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 3:14 pm
I guess we’re just going to have to find out how many College Democrats and Republicans have been using “taxpayer-subsidized” resources for political purposes. The public sidewalk is taxpayer-subsidized; does that mean that I can’t stand on it for political purposes? Come on.

Comment by Squideshi Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 4:06 pm
Doesen’t Bill who post here work for a taxpayer supported group. And acts like he is on Blogo’s campaign staff??

Comment by MIDSTATE Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 4:17 pm
Wow, the Greens first media feeding frenzy! How exciting. OK, maybe to some people it looks bad for a student to use her student email address while she’s volunteering for a campaign. Now she’ll stop. I hardly think it adds up to a first rate political scandal, but, if it does, I think the College Democrats and Republicans should be a part of it.

Comment by Free Thinker Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 5:14 pm
Sorry, I left out the email addresses for the democrats and republicans at SIU. That would be tycratic@siu.ed for the dems and laurenjr@siu.ed for the repubs. Go ahead and use the university email system to reach them with your comments.

Comment by Free Thinker Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 5:23 pm
If the woman here is only a student, and not an employee of the state university, there is no issue. Amazing how the press often has no clue about law or politics. Common sense is out the window.

The woman pays tuition in some form or another, subsidized or not. She’s paid for the email service.

Under the logic of the critics here, the elderly widow who only has Social Security for income would be prevented from ever taking her own battered car to a political event, under the theory that her car is supported by an arm of government.

The critics’ logic here would also say that student email accounts couldn’t even be used to lobby for better cafeteria food, or stepped-up security patrols of campus at night. Those projects would also be political campaigns in a real sense.

Yes, by all means, let’s encourage the idea among young students that email and technology are only to be used for the funny video clip of the day.

A caveat. Of course if SIU wants to impose its own internal rules dealing with use of its own system, that could be ok. Of course as a government entity, would have to be concerned with 1st Amendment and Equal Protection issues. Couldn’t ban the Green Party, but allow Students Against Nuking the Gay Whales to use the email unharrassed.

Comment by NoneOfTheAbove Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 6:28 pm
So, if Whitney’s campaign used web-based email accounts, would that make things alright?

Comment by Carl Nyberg Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 6:44 pm
And while we’re at it, I resent my tax dollars being used to pay House and Senate staffers who are nothing more than glorified, year-round campaign staff. The day that Madigan, Cross, Jones and Watson stop doing that and obey the law, then we can worry about whether some pissant third parties are using a university phone.

Comment by Fearless Freep Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 7:13 pm
Boy if Whitney were to win this would certainly make for an interesting administration. Grad student chiefs of staff using their school computers to prepare his re-election platform. Apparently if students run you campaign you don’t have to follow ethics laws. Can’t wait to see how the major parties decide to incorporate this.

Comment by anon Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 9:42 pm
The cost of the student manager using her paid-for e-mail account is like a drop in the ocean compared to the free campaign literature, disguised as new program information, that the governor has been sending out these past two months. Hundreds of thousands in paper, envelopes, printing costs, printers time and postage. I wonder how many people with no children or grown children out of the house received AllKids literature because I know that there ARE NOT 600,000 Illinois children without some kind of coverage but that’s how many AllKids flyers, postcards, etc., went out.

Comment by Martha Mitchell Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 10:22 pm
I think the more important point here really involves the many (unanswered) questions asked by commenters that show the difficulties with our current ethics legislation and many other varieties also. The permutations of the questions presented by taking the words in law and rules out to their logical extremes make it very difficult to even hypothesize about what the answers might be. That’s not a bad thing for a college ethics class debate on the subject, but a little more touchy when an employee, or student, or professor doesn’t know for sure whether they will go to jail or not for doing something.

Comment by steve schnorf Tuesday, Sep 12, 06 @ 11:49 pm
In the debate between traditional public forum, designated public forum, limited public forum, and non-forum, I would called this a limited public forum per the university’s own policy, with the only restriction being against using the system for commercial or for-profit purposes.

Comment by Squideshi Wednesday, Sep 13, 06 @ 10:46 am