Where'd you get those addresses?: Ex-teammates, current campaign combatants Elicker, Frank.
Mayor Justin Elicker accused his former campaign manager of stealing an email list, then received a demand for an apology for defamation.
That’s the latest finger-pointing chapter in this year’s campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination.
It began with a cease-and-desist letter two-term incumbent Elicker sent Monday to Shafiq Abdussabur, one of three Democrats seeking to challenge him in a Sept. 12 primary; Abdusssabur’s campaign treasurer, Dana Samuel; and Abdussabur Campaign Manager Gage Frank — who happens to have served as Elicker’s campaign manager in 2019, then as Elicker’s first mayoral spokesperson.
Elicker accused the Abdussabur campaign in the letter of “sending emails” through the NationBuilder platform ”to people who did not provide you with their email addresses; nor with their permission to contact them by email.”
“After initial investigation, a noteworthy number of people who were on my previous Campaigns’ email list began receiving emails from your Campaign in early April 2023, including email addresses that were uniquely associated with my Campaign email list,” Elicker wrote.
He cited an Abdussabur email to a “salted address” as “unequivocal proof that you are using my Campaigns’ email list. This email address was used only in our database and enables us to track theft. Your Campaign is, without question, using an email list stolen from my Campaign to engage in unauthorized email communications and solicitations.”
The letter proceeds to note that the penalty for larceny includes “jail time.”
“You must immediately stop using any and all information that was stolen from my Campaigns,” the letter orders. “You must confirm to me in 24 hours that you have ceased using any and all information that was stolen from my Campaigns. You must immediately destroy all copies of information that was stolen from my Campaigns. You must confirm to me in 48 hours that you have destroyed all copies of information that was stolen from my campaigns.”
Elicker’s team also complained directly to NationBuilder, through which the Abdussabur campaign sends campaign emails.
NationBuilder proceeded to notify the Abdussabur campaign that it was temporarily freezing its account.
Gage Frank said Wednesday that the campaign responded immediately, agreed to remove around 500 email addresses from its lists, and had access restored “in 25 minutes.” (The company could not be reached for comment. Its “acceptable use” policy states: “The sending of any form of Unsolicited Bulk Email through NationBuilder’s servers is prohibited.”)
Frank also denied that anyone “stole” the Elicker addresses.
Instead, Frank argued, the campaign had used public information.
On Jan. 1, 2020, right before Elicker took the oath of office, Frank entered all the campaign email addresses into a city government account so they could be included in future informational government email messages, Frank said. He said Elicker told him to do that.
That means that as a result, that list became public information. Available to anyone. For any use.
“Due to this fact, you know that the Abdussabur campaign has not violated any laws. As such, please have your campaign issue an apology and retraction regarding the cease-and-desist letter of April 24, 2023,” Frank wrote back to Elicker on Tuesday.
On Wednesday Frank demanded that Elicker issue an apology for, as he put it in a press release, “using defamatory statements knowing his statements are false or at least failing to obtain the accuracy of his statements prior to making allegations of larceny. The Mayor’s response should give serious pause to all but his most ardent supporters: the Mayor is not interested in truth but, rather, a win at all costs.”
“Accusing a campaign of larceny is a big deal,” Frank said in a conversation with the Independent. “We shouldn’t be discrediting people who are following the rules and doing the right thing.”
Frank argued further that if the list can be “stolen,” that means it has monetary value, and therefore should have been reported in campaign financial filings.
“Regardless of whether it was taken from the city or taken from my campaign, it was inappropriate and unethical to take the list and use it to fundraise and spam people,” Elicker responded in a conversation with the Independent.
“They were using [the list] to spam people to fundraise. It is unethical. I am glad they stopped.”
Looking forward to civil, substantive discussion of the issues New Haven faces.