Breach of Trust?

Last week's Hispanic Affairs Council of Alaska candidate forum for U.S. House hopefuls - two Democrats, and two Republicans - has been well-covered in the local media. Rep. Don Young (R - Flat Earth Society) wasn't there. He has offered to meet some time in the future with the HACA board and those who have voted for him interested members of the community.

As Independent Alaskan reported yesterday and today, a few weeks ago, Sen. Ted Stevens (R - toobz are not a truck) was hosted by the HACA as their Senator.

Here's Independent Alaskan's post on this from today:

It seems that there was an internal miscommunication issue between board members and the usage of the pictures from the meeting with Ted Stevens. Permission was granted to the campaign office, rather than the Senate office. However, the intent and the understanding was for them to be used in connection with the Senator's official business and not in connection with his campaign. As I said before, the event was with him as an elected official and not a candidate.

A formal request for the removal of the pictures has been made, but because a board member told his campaign staff (I finally confirmed this) that it was OK to use them there, the campaign cannot be blamed for the improper use of the pictures.

[Update] The pictures will be removed and they have apologized for the confusion. The request to post them apparently came from a campaign staffer and for the campaign's site and not from the Senator's office in D.C.

I disagree. It appears to me, that anyone representing either the senator's public team, or his campaign team should have known that to have the senator appear before the body as their senator, and then to tout the appearance at their campaign site - even briefly - is a violation of Federal campaign rules. Probably more than one. The pictures themselves are far less of an issue than the breach of public trust and sense of entitlement beyond the law, in which the GOP is constantly, and so willfully engaged.

It appears that the photos are already down. But I know that the Mark Begich campaign was already onto this, taking screenshots, early this morning. Good luck squirming out of this one, Stevens campaign staffers....

Update - Thursday noon: case in point. I just received this:

Dear Mr. Munger,

I work with the Stevens for Senate Committee. I wanted to respond to your calls to the campaign office and the Senator's official office about photos from a meeting the Senator had with the Hispanic Affairs Council of Alaska.

That meeting was on a weekend in a restaurant in Anchorage. The Senator had been asked to meet with that group and was happy to do so. After the meeting individuals (not official senate staff or campaign staff) who attending the meeting sent photos they had taken of the event to campaign staff. Campaign staff asked if we could post the photos on our web site and campaign staff was told by e-mail that we could. The photos to my knowledge were not sent to any official staff and no one from the official office ever asked about posting the photos on the offical web site. The captions for the photos did not indicate or imply an endorsement of the Senator by this group.

We now have been asked to remove the photos from the campaign website by the official with HACA who we were told had said we could post the photos. In light of that request the photos were removed from the site this morning.

There is absolutely nothing improper with our campaign making use of photos taken at an event by people attending that event who send us the pictures and give us permission to post them on our web site. I hope this clarifies this matter.

Tim McKeever

Paid for by the Stevens for Senate Committee

image by Dennis Zaki