The Unablogger
Today I received the 2017 End of Session Newsletter from State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed (Democrat, 5th District). It’s a lovely puff piece, complete with four full-color photos of Nasheed (three on the first page) and her summary complaints about Republican legislation. She invites recipients to three town hall meetings she has scheduled, in north St. Louis, south St. Louis and the Central West End. (Curiously, the last page asks recipients to return the form to her, with our own postage, even though the form is not a questionnaire seeking any input from recipients. That’s weird, but just a diversion from the point of this post.)
This is a fairly typical newsletter, produced at state expense (without any “paid for by” disclaimers required for campaign mailers), that all state senators and representatives get to send to their constituents. The problem? I am not a constituent of Sen. Nasheed. I live in the 4th District, a few miles from the closest boundary with Nasheed’s 5th District. I have my own state senator from whom to receive publicly financed propaganda.
Why would Sen. Nasheed send her mailing to me and others out of her district? She is probably planning to run for another office, perhaps citywide or maybe Congress. The three town hall meetings throughout the city that the newsletter promotes would certainly promote such a candidacy. While I don’t live in her district, I do live in the city and the First Congressional District in which Nasheed resides and wields clout. It would benefit such a campaign if people within the boundaries of whatever office she is seeking got to see her puff-piece newsletter. Not having the campaign literature disclaimer might even give it greater credibility. All the better if she doesn’t have to spend her own campaign funds to produce and mail it!
This abuse needs to be curbed.
The Unablogger 