Williamsburg Sun

Amidst a competitive electoral race, Democratic candidate Jessica Anderson's campaign mistakenly dispatched almost two thousand political emails to school staff who didn't consent to receive political messages from her last week. The unexpected move prompted questions about campaign tactics amid her prior condemnation of her Republican opponent's distribution of campaign-funded doughnuts at local schools. 

“It was a mistake. It was my fault. It was stupid,” Tim Stewart, James City resident and self-described senior adviser to Anderson’s campaign, told WWBT News. “Jess has never even logged into this system.” 

According to WWBT, in an unexpected turn of events, the campaign of Anderson, who is running for the Virginia House of Delegates against Republican Del. Amanda Batten (R-James City), has come under scrutiny after a mass political email was sent to employees of the Williamsburg-James City County school division, where Anderson herself is employed. The incident unfolded shortly after Anderson had criticized her GOP rival for distributing campaign-funded doughnuts at several schools within the district. The contrasting actions have ignited a wave of debate and discussion in the run-up to the upcoming election

According to Anderson's campaign, the school division's email addresses were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, with the intention of using the data to refine their outreach efforts, WWBT reports. The campaign, aiming to create a local voter database, incorporated the school employees' information into their records. However, an inadvertent error led to the sending of approximately 1,900 political emails to school division employees who had not willingly subscribed to receive such communications from Anderson's campaign.

Responding to the incident, Anderson clarified that the intention behind obtaining the teacher information was solely for "data purposes" to facilitate better outreach and engagement within the district, per the report from WWBT. She emphasized that the purpose was not to amass additional email addresses for political messaging. "When I go door-knocking, this is a way to have this information in our database," Anderson explained during an interview.

Williamsburg-James City County Schools reported that 1,889 instances of the email were transmitted to official school accounts, according to Virginia Mercury. In response, Kara Wall, a spokesperson for the school division, mentioned that they had assessed the issue, engaging in a discussion with the Anderson campaign. While Wall refrained from discussing potential school policy breaches, she stated that public employee email addresses were openly accessible, both on the school's website and through procedures like Freedom of Information Act requests.

Documents shared with Virginia Mercury by Tim Stewart revealed that he had initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on May 8, inquiring about a log of FOIA requests received by the division over a span of several months. Upon obtaining the FOIA log a few days later, Stewart subsequently asked for copies of three sets of documents that had been previously furnished to other requesters. Among these documents, two Excel spreadsheets stood out, providing a comprehensive record of school division employees, inclusive of names, job descriptions, and email addresses. One of these employee lists had been specifically sought by the local teachers' union, the Williamsburg-James City Education Association, to support their collective bargaining endeavors. The second request for similar information had been made by Academy Research Group, a company that frequently files FOIA requests concerning details on school personnel.