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PROVIDENCE -- A staffer for Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee distributed a series of negative e-mails criticizing his Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse, from her Senate computer, a violation of Senate rules, the staffer acknowledged Wednesday.
Lammis Vargas, a staff assistant in Chafee's district office in Providence, told The Associated Press she sent the e-mails from a personal account on Yahoo but used her Senate computer to do so.
Vargas has been suspended without pay pending further investigation, Chafee spokesman Stephen Hourahan said this evening.
The e-mails, sent under the name "Noname Nolast," began Monday, a little over a week before the Nov. 7 election. Polls show Whitehouse apparently leading Chafee, although still within the margin of error. Democrats hope a win in Rhode Island will help them in their goal to take a majority in the Senate.
Vargas, 25, sent at least three e-mails critical of Whitehouse for his work as attorney general, specifically his handling of two cases, one in which a teenage witness in a murder trial was killed and one in which a man was shot by a police officer.
"WHITEHOUSE, AG at the time did nothing.......," said a message Vargas wrote Monday.
The e-mails were sent to a large number of reporters in Rhode Island and elsewhere.
The e-mails violate rules prohibiting Senate equipment from being used for political purposes, said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that encourages compliance with federal election laws and ethics rules.
"That's government paid and you're supposed to be doing only government work on it," said Potter, who is also a former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission.
Vargas said that at the time she sent the e-mails, she did not see them as a campaign-related issue.
"I was very naive to be using a U.S. Senate computer," she said. "If I would have sent it from a different computer, perhaps home, anywhere else, this wouldn't have happened."
Hourahan pointed out that Vargas did not break any laws, but broke Senate rules.
"It's not something that we've ever dealt with before. We take it very seriously," he said.
Vargas has worked in Chafee's district office since January 2005, answering phones, greeting visitors and often serving as a Spanish interpreter, she said.
Matthew Jerzyk, editor of "Rhode Island's Future," a Democratic blog on state politics, said he and the blog's technological administrator decided to trace the e-mails' origins Wednesday after the appearance of the third message, which he called vile and distasteful.
After they traced the message back to a U.S. Senate computer, he sent out a message to reporters showing the source of the message.
A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned in September after admitting he posted misleading messages to political blogs using a government computer. Tad Furtado posted messages that professed support for Bass' Democratic opponent, but discounting his chances of winning in the election.
In 2004, a staffer to Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine was fired for using Senate computers to post details of her sex life on the Internet.
-- Projo.com staff writer Steve Peoples and The Associated Press
