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May 21, 2007

‘Help Romney’ e-mails sent by state GOP not an endorsement

The e-mail wasn’t supposed to be an endorsement.

So, the subject heading, “Help Romney for President,” and the large color picture of Mitt Romney and his wife adjacent to the phrase, “Mitt Needs You, America Needs You,” may have been a bit confusing to the 10,000 or so people on the state Republican Party’s e-mail list.

The state GOP sent out the message last Wednesday at 9:49 a.m.

It was the first time, according to state GOP chief of operations Andrew Berg, that the state party had distributed a mass e-mail message for a presidential candidate.

“We would typically avoid sending e-mails for unendorsed candidates,” he said.

Perhaps that explains why the e-mail with the subject heading “Correction” went out at 2:50 p.m.

“Earlier today you may have received an e-mail regarding Mitt Romney for President. In our effort to keep Rhode Island Republicans informed of the many existing events and announcements relating to the 2008 presidential campaign, we sent you the previous e-mail at the request of the candidate. The Rhode Island Republican Party has not endorsed any specific candidate and will offer this communication tool to all the Republican contenders. Thank you and sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”

State Party Chairman Giovanni Cicione said he hadn’t reviewed the original e-mail before it went out (he was at a meeting of the Republican National Committee in South Carolina). When he saw the message less than an hour later, he said he was concerned that the sentence, “This is not an endorsement of Mitt Romney for President,” came at the very end of the e-mail, after the color photo, a detailed message from the Romney campaign, and a full article taken from The Journal in which Governor Carcieri endorsed Romney.

“I was worried; it was a small 6-point exclusion at the end,” Cicione said. “I want to be very clear that the party is supporting all candidates until we have an endorsed candidate. Until then I just don’t view it as my job to help one campaign and not help another.”

Expect a similar e-mail in the near future on behalf of the Rudy Giuliani campaign, according to Berg.

Did Carcieri mind his name being used in the e-mail?

“I’m 100 percent sure that the governor isn’t aware of it,” his spokesman, Jeff Neal, said on Friday. “The governor has made his endorsement of Governor Mitt Romney clear. In doing so, I think he expected that his endorsement would be mentioned in various political circles.”

--By Steve Peoples, Elizabeth Gudrais and Scott MacKay

Journal Staff Writers

Posted by Pam Cotter  at 9:17 AM | Permalink

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