"Oops..." Did innocent email-autofill error expose campaign tampering?
Taylor McLeod stared at the email and thought she might still be asleep and in some weird dream.
McLeod had just woken up from a nap at home in Missouri one day earlier this month when she opened her laptop to check email. But the strange correspondence in her inbox made no sense.
Sent by a printing company in Florida, it was asking McLeod to approve and send payment for a campaign mailer from a political action committee endorsing three West Palm Beach election candidates.
But she said the weirdest part of the email was the attached mailer: One of the endorsed candidates was Cory Neering, who was running for a city commission seat against Katherine Waldron.
Waldron is the mother of McLeod's fiancée.
"This was just emailed to me. Im (sic) super confused,'' McLeod wrote as she forwarded it to Waldron.
Upon closer inspection, the email suggested something else to supporters of Mayor Jeri Muoio, who defeated Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell in the March 10 election. To them, it showed that Mitchell's campaign was secretly and illegally trying to influence the mayor's race.
Two other names were copied on the same email sent to McLeod -- Beth Kennedy, Mitchell's campaign manager, and Richard Pinsky, Mitchell's ex-husband who has been working on her campaign. But the mailer included a disclaimer declaring the PAC independent from the campaign.
"When I saw it, it made it pretty clear what has been going on that we've always kind of known but there was never any evidence (of). It was ironic that that's how we found out,'' said Waldron.
http://host.coxmediagroup.com/wpb/circulation/html/?s=oops-did-innocent-email-autofill-error-expose-campaign-tampering.html
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The article is from the Palm Beach Post, but for some reason the story is butchered up when I get it from the actual source. Had to go to Cox Media in order to get the full story.
= new reply since forum marked as read
