Attorney General candidate Kimberly Dudik has found herself in hot water recently after being found in violation of campaign practice laws. A campaign email was sent from Dudik’s campaign to nearly 2,500 University of Montana staff members on their work emails, which is a direct violation of Montana’s campaign laws. Montana law prohibits any public employee from engaging in campaign activities and prevents them from being subjected to any campaign activity while at work. Since the University of Montana is a state funded institution, having Dudik sending campaign emails is directly in violating of the state’s campaign practice laws.
Two emails were sent out to U of M staff in late May supporting Dudik’s candidacy. At least one university employee directly responded saying that he “had not requested any information” from the campaign, while others contacted Commissioner of Political Practices Jeff Mangan for him to investigate.
A formal complaint was filed on June 12th by Missoula attorney Quentin Rhoades on behalf of the University of Montana staff and Mangan determined that Dudik was indeed in violation. Dudik has accepted responsibility for her violation and says that immediately after receiving an email from a UM staff member about it “we immediately addressed it and had all university employee email addresses removed from the email list so they would not receive any additional emails.” When asked about why she felt it appropriate to use government employee emails in the first place, Dudik said, “The campaign was under the impression that because these emails were publicly available in the manner they were, that it was permissible to use them to contact individuals. Mangan has said that this violation will more than likely be settled with a fine to the Dudik campaign.
Campaign practice violations continue to be an issue in elections throughout Montana. This exact issue came up in the 2016 gubernatorial election when Greg Gianforte purchased a government email list from the Montana Association of Counties to add to his campaign email list. At no time has it ever been legal for any candidate to solicit votes from government employees while they are at work, this means contacting them through their work emails especially.
As a candidate for any major office, it is imperative that you know campaign practice laws and follow them to the letter to avoid the appearance of corruption. This is the second time that Dudik has been found in violation in recent years. In 2014 during a campaign for the Montana legislature, Dudik’s opponent Gary Marbut filed a complaint against her for failing to report some of her campaign costs after she had defeated him in the race. Two days after the complaint had been filed, Dudik submitted an amended campaign finance report acknowledging and reporting the $900 her campaign had paid to Mike’s Print Shop for flyers that they had not previously disclosed. Mistakes happen all the time, but candidates should know that doing everything they can to comply with campaign practice laws is very important if they intend on winning an election.
