Judge candidate's emails ruled legal

Judge candidate's emails ruled legal

Walt Wagner used Crook County's Listserv to distribute campaign material

By Joel Aschbrenner / The Bulletin

  Published: September 05. 2012 4:00AM PST

A candidate for Crook County judge was within his rights when he used a county Listserv last week to publicize his campaign Facebook page, a state election official said.

But a county official said the email put county employees who received it at risk of violating election rules.

Walt Wagner, an Independent Party candidate challenging incumbent Mike McCabe, said he accidently included the county Listserv in an email blast promoting his new Facebook page. Distributing campaign material, Wagner said, is his constitutional right.

Assistant County Counsel Eric Blaine asked Wagner in an email to “cease and desist" sending campaign emails to the county Listserv.

The county uses the Listserv to send public meeting notices and news releases to employees and members of the public who request them.

Distributing campaign material through the Listserv puts county employees at risk of violating a campaign law that prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities, like visiting campaign websites, on the clock, Blaine said. 

But nothing prohibits Wagner from distributing campaign material to county employees or using the county Listserv to do so, said Andrea Cantu-Schomus, director of communications with the Oregon Secretary of State's Office. In fact, McCabe could use the county Listserv to publicize a website of his own if he wanted, she said.

Wagner said he viewed Blaine's request as an attempt to intimidate him from continuing to distribute campaign material. “When you start intimidating someone and it could affect their First Amendment rights ... that's wrong," Wagner said.

Wagner is a candidate for county judge, an administrative position and chair of the county court — a three-member governing body — with no judicial responsibilities.

Blaine said he was only trying preclude county employees from receiving campaign material at work.

“The county's only interest is to protect employees from violating campaign rules," Blaine said.

Wagner said that is not his problem.

“It's up to the county to make sure county employees are informed that when something comes in like that, they ... should either delete it or send it to their home email," he said.

In all, 126 people received Wagner's email. Several complained to the county about it, Blaine said.

The county is now looking to secure its Listserv from similar uses in the future, Blaine said.

The county had used a simple list of email addresses that any recipient could access by clicking “reply all," rather than using a blind carbon copy feature, which prevents recipients from seeing who else received the message.