Urgent junk mail

The
envelope looked official enough. “URGENT,” it read, “Absentee Voter Information
Enclosed.”

            But when a Brighton resident who’d
requested an absentee ballot opened the letter, she was disturbed to find that
it contained no ballot, nor any “information” related to voting absentee.
Instead, the envelope was stuffed with campaign materials promoting the
candidacies of Republican State Senate candidate Joe Robach and Republican
County Court Judge Alex Renzi.

            It also contained a letter “From the
Desk of Maggie Brooks” urging the recipient — in this case, a registered
Democrat — to vote for the Republican Party ticket in this year’s state and
national races. The letter is signed “Maggie Brooks,” and beneath her
signature, she included her title, “Monroe County Clerk.”

            “When she opened it, she was quite
aggravated and showed it to me,” says the woman’s husband, who, like his wife,
requested anonymity as whistleblowers. “Both of us realized there was nothing
official about it at all. We questioned whether or not it was legal for the
Board of Elections to turn over the information to a political party, and [for
Brooks] to use a ruse like that to push a candidate.”

            In fact, it’s not only legal, but,
according to Monroe County Board of Elections Commissioner Peter Quinn, the
board is required by state law to provide lists of citizens requesting absentee
ballots to party officials or anyone else who wants them, for a nominal fee.
Whether it’s legal for Brooks, an elected public official, to use “a ruse” to
promote political candidates is another matter.

            Lee Daghlian, director of public
information for the New York State Board of Elections, says he’s “never heard
of a [county] clerk doing that.”

            Though the letter is purportedly
from the county clerk’s “desk,” it’s not on official county stationary, and at
the very bottom of the letter, in small print, is a disclaimer: “Not paid for
at taxpayer expense.”

            By law, government officials can
neither promote nor disparage political candidates using public funds. Brooks
and her fellow Republicans “obviously know if they’d done that on official
stationary or something like that and the public is paying for it,” they’d be
breaking the law, Daghlian says.

            In Daghlian’s opinion, the
disclaimer probably keeps the mailing within the letter of the law. “I think
it’d pass muster because of the zinger she throws in,” he says.

            Not everyone is so sure.

            “I think the most disappointing
thing about it is how it comes, marked ‘urgent absentee ballot information,'”
says Monroe County Democratic Party chair Ted O’Brien. “It makes it look like
it’s an official government letter. Then you’ve got inside [a letter] from the
desk of the Monroe County Clerk. It looks like it’s some kind of an official
notification of what you’re supposed to do.

            “I think that probably does cross
the line, but it’s not surprising,” O’Brien continues. “The county clerk has
spent an enormous amount of her time on partisan activities, rather than
governmental activities, and this is the latest example.”

            O’Brien, a lawyer, says he’s not sure
if his party will take legal action based on the mailing. “If we really thought
that there was a violation of law, we clearly would,” he says. “I just don’t
know yet whether this would constitute that. But it’s clearly deceptive.”

            “It’s literally within the letter of
the law, but not the intent of the law,” says the Brighton resident whose wife
received Brooks’ letter. “It’s very shabby,” he continues. “The Monroe County
Clerk shouldn’t send out something that’s political.”

            “The letter shows that Maggie Brooks
and the Republicans don’t mind deceiving citizens in an effort to get campaign
materials in their hands,” says Green Party of Monroe County Chair Jason Crane.

            “If it weren’t for the fact that the
first impression one gets from the letter is that this is from Brooks the
official, not Brooks the campaigner, you might just chalk this up to shrewd
advertising,” Crane continues. “But to the average voter, it has a very
official look, and it smacks of an abuse of position on Brooks’s part… We need
to elect representatives who are more concerned about working for the people
than about working the people.”

            Legally, the letter inhabits “a gray
area,” Crane says. “But certainly, I think it raises some serious ethical
questions” — serious ethical questions Brooks seems loathe to address.

            Brooks’ secretary at the County
Clerk’s office initially said her boss was temporarily unavailable for comment.
But the secretary subsequently called back and said the letter “has nothing to
do with us,” despite the fact Brooks signed it as “Monroe County Clerk.”

            “We can’t take political calls,” the
secretary said, referring the matter to county Republican headquarters, located
at 301 Exchange Boulevard, the return address on the envelope.

            County Republican Party Chairman
Stephen Minarik III, did not return calls seeking comment.

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2002.