The Michele Bachmann Republican presidential campaign stands accused of stealing the email list from a Christian homeschooling network, which, perhaps coincidentally, has a board member who is also a paid Bachmann employee. The action is a violation of several laws, including federal election laws.
The Iowa Republican reports:
The Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators (NICHE) has sent out an email to its members that says Michele Bachmann’s campaign uploaded the group’s email list into their campaign database without permission.
The Republican also offers the email apology sent by Justin LaVan, NICHE’s president, to those on the email address list, which states in part:
I want to apologize on behalf of the NICHE Board and advise you that we discovered that our list of homeschool contacts was uploaded without our knowledge or permission by the Michele Bachmann Campaign and used twice for e-mails from her campaign. We have been assured by the Bachmann Campaign that it was inadvertent. Due to safeguards built into our contact list, we immediately recognized the use. That same day NICHE contacted the Bachmann Campaign and instructed them to cease any further use of the NICHE list, to which they immediately took the necessary corrective actions to correct the situation. By the next day, the Bachmann Campaign was able to find that portion of their database that contained the NICHE list, and we have received written assurance that our contact list was completely deleted.
…
However, due to federal legal issues surrounding the unauthorized use, NICHE is forced to take several steps to rectify this situation. Because the Bachmann Campaign did receive the benefit of two emails to the contacts on our list – even though NICHE did not authorize this use in any way – we now must require the Bachmann Campaign to pay for the reasonable value of that usage. Further, in accordance with the legal requirements, NICHE must allow all the other campaigns the equal opportunity to pay for two similar e-mails to the contacts on the NICHE list. If the other campaigns decide to pay and send the two e-mails, NICHE will send the e-mails directly without sharing or compromising our contact list in any way.
Again, this one-time procedure is the unfortunate result of this incident and the actions NICHE is required to follow under the federal laws. I sincerely apologize and seek your understanding in this.
“Bachmann, a socially conservative Minnesota congresswoman, is most assuredly courting the home-school vote, which famously helped propel 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to victory in the Iowa caucuses,” Jason Noble at The Des Moines Register writes, and adds:
It is unclear exactly how the campaign came to possess the list — which LaVan said contained the e-mail addresses of “many thousands†of home-school families, advocates, donors, vendors and businesses — although Bachmann staffer Barbara Heki also has been a NICHE board member.
“That’s a likely possible link, but we don’t know,†LaVan said. “We don’t know.â€
Nonetheless, Heki’s current status with the home-school organization has become ambiguous.
LaVan declined to comment when asked whether Heki was still a board member, but said the group was “hoping to finalize something†on Friday.