The Salt Lake Tribune describes the way the Romney campaign is putting his Utah supporters to work calling into battleground states. It is, after all, standard operating procedure for political parties to put supporters in non-contested states to work for the larger campaign.
But it looks like at least a few of Romney’s Utah supporters are using LDS congregational email lists to drum up donations—despite explicit instructions not to do so from LDS Church Headquarters.
We know that the Romney campaign is mobilizing Mormon family and friend connections for fundraising, as the New York Times and others have reported. Leaked emails from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns have also revealed ranking Church leaders are active, albeit as private citizens, in supporting their fellow Latter-day Saint. And some Romney supporters are using congregational email lists—which, fairness should note, get mobilized without authorization in the service of all sorts of purposes, including multilevel marketing schemes. A reader somewhere in the Beehive State sent me the following message received via congregational email list:
Subject: Women for Mitt Join Together
Dear fellow Utah women!
During the week of our Pioneer Days celebration, I’d like to invite you to join Utah women all throughout the state in sending a loud message of support and relevance as Utahns, and as women in this presidential campaign. We need to be relevant and the only way we can is with our dollars. We might not have any weight when it comes to votes, but we do with our ability to fill the war chest so Governor Romey has the ability to communicate his message in key battleground states. Our dollars—even just a $25 dollar contribution—add up in a significant way and provide the campaign with the necessary resources to win the White House.
As co-chair of the Utah Women for Romney, I am excited about our plan to involve you right now. Utah women have a history of leading the way and I hope we can do it now. Did you know that the nation’s first senator was from Utah? Martha Hughes Cannon! And in 1870 when we were just a territory, Utah was the first place where women legally voted (we barely beat out Wyoming since our elections were earlier.) Utah women have a tradition of yearning to make a difference. We need to be a factor in this race, and this is the only way we can. For the next week, we want to see if we can get 1,000 Utah women to contribute a minimum of $25 online (the rules will actually “let” you contribute all the way up to $75,000 but we really just want to count you in at any level!) I invite you to pass this along to every Utah woman who can contribute $25…
This is an investment that I’m asking you to make. This isn’t just throwing money at any old political campaign. Your donation is an investment in making America’s course correction possible. Think of what that means in terms of tax and regulation reform alone as a “return on investment.” That really does affect your bottom line…
This is a “jumpstart” for several more fun events we have planned leading up to the November election, and we are the first state to try this. We’d love to show all the other W4R teams throughout the nation that this can work, and once again, Utah can lead the way!
