Lenny Curry campaign sends city employees campaign-related emails

When it comes to sending campaign emails to city employees, there must be something about February in Jacksonville.

In February 2014, there was controversy regarding Mayor Alvin Brown‘s campaign operation sending city employees fundraising emails, according to the Florida Times-Union:

Brown’s campaign emailed an urgent fundraising appeal to thousands of people, asking them to “stand with me” by donating “$50, $35 or $10 to my campaign today.”

Some of those emails went to city government email addresses, prompting (Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry) Holland to get guidance from the Florida Division of Elections on whether Brown’s campaign crossed any legal lines.

The upshot of that review is that state law prohibits campaign fundraising on government property, and that would include fundraising sent to government email accounts, Holland said.

“To me, there’s not an intent to break the law, but I think it’s a misunderstanding that you can’t do that,” Holland said of the Brown campaign’s emails. “It’s a matter of them doing their due diligence and removing the government addresses.”

This February the tables have been turned, with Lenny Curry‘s mayoral campaign being accused of sending campaign emails, including emails promoting upcoming fundraisers, to city employees.

Although such emails are still not permitted by law, partisans of Alvin Brown who might want punitive action to be taken likely will be disappointed.

We talked to elections supervisor Holland today, and he repeated the points he made last year about the Brown campaign’s urgent appeals — namely that malign intent would have to be proven for any action to be taken.

Holland reminded us that “both the mayor and the Curry campaign did the same thing” as it relates to the practice, and in either case it is impossible to establish who signed the city employees up for the Curry for Mayor email list.

“Our role is to inform,” Holland said, adding he has been assured that the Curry campaign intends to scrub all COJ.Net emails from its distribution list, both immediately to correct the current problem and going forward to prevent a recurrence.