Gov. Sean Parnell's re-election campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising email to an unknown number of state employee inboxes on Thursday, prompting the state Department of Administration to quickly notify all 18,000 employees that using state resources for "partisan political purposes" is illegal.
But the email did not violate the law, said Paul Dauphinais, executive director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
"It was not sent from a state email. If it were, that's potentially a different issue," he said, adding that APOC staff met quickly after learning of the email.
The email came from info@Parnell2014.com. It had "the appropriate 'paid-for-by' message on it, so there was no violation there either," Dauphinais said.
The campaign had contracted with an Outside email vendor, AirNet, to send the email, said Luke Miller, Parnell's campaign spokesman.
The email list had been used in past political efforts, and the Parnell campaign had asked the company to remove emails with addresses that would reach government employee inboxes, such as those ending with .gov or .edu. That didn't happen, Miller said.
The Parnell campaign had "previously requested -- and been assured -- that any governmental email addresses would be suppressed from this list," said an emailed statement from Miller.
"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this vendor error may have caused," the statement said.
As soon as the campaign realized a mistake had been made, Miller said, he called the state ethics attorney. The attorney suggested that asking the vendor to send another email taking credit for the mistake would only make the situation worse.
"'Compounding the problem' is how they put it," Miller said.
Miller said he did not know how many state employees received the fundraising email, which provided a link to donate to Parnell's effort to beat challenger Bill Walker.
By chance, one employee solicited was Curtis Thayer, Administration Department commissioner and a Parnell appointee. Within an hour, the department had sent a standard email to all state employees telling them what they could do if they received campaign emails at their state addresses, said Andy Mills, spokesman for the department.
"If you receive a partisan political email message soliciting a response, you may reply that Alaska statutes prohibit you from the use of state resources for partisan political purposes and simply ask the sender to discontinue further messages concerning campaign activities," the department statement said.
Shortly after Parnell's early morning email was sent, the Alaska Democratic Party accused Parnell of using the "state email system" to promote his campaign.
They also took the opportunity to point out that Parnell's running mate, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, had been fined in July by the Alaska Public Offices Commission for using municipal resources to issue an apologetic press release for comments he made at a candidate's forum.
The Parnell email may have been more than a simple mistake, said Zack Fields, spokesman for the Alaska Democratic Party.
"There's some history here with the Parnell-Sullivan ticket," said Fields. "I'd like to assume it's isolated, but given what else has happened, I wouldn't put it past them."
But Miller said the two incidents are not related.
"There's no connection. It's a mistake by our vendor," said Miller.