Matt Schultz Open Records Exclusive, Part 1: SOS focused on UTGD blog post
By JoeQuimby | June 24, 2011
A helpful tipster has provided Under the Golden Dome with documents from an open records request to Iowa’s Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s office that contain some very troubling internal emails. The emails span 10 days, from June 1st through June 10th, and they are going to raise some very difficult questions that Schultz is going to have to answer about using public money for his political attack on Jon Huntsman.
Over the next few days we will release the emails, and discuss how it affects the Secretary of State’s office and their legal obligation to remain independent and ensure election integrity.
As we have previously reported, on June 6th, Secretary of State Matt Schultz sent out a press release on official Secretary of State letterhead that was highly critical of Republican presidential candidate Jon Hunstman and his decision to not contest the Iowa caucuses. Outlets such as the Des Moines Register were shocked to see Schultz using tax money to attack a Republican presidential candidate, and his attacks raised serious questions about his motivations and the legal implications of using public money for political campaigning.
The first email we are releasing was sent by Erin Rapp, Communications Director for the Secretary of State’s Office, to Matt Schultz and his policy advisor and legal counsel, Doug Struyk. Not to toot our own horn, but this email from June 7th in part concerns us, your humble bloggers at UTGD. Rapp copied and pasted the whole text of a blog post written by GoldenEye earlier that day entitled “Is Santorum Campaign Behind Matt Schultz’s Hunstman Attack?” to Schultz and Struyk. The story noted that Schultz’s brother, Thomas Schultz, was the founder of the Draft Rick Santorum effort and that Santorum’s Iowa consultant, Nick Ryan, advised the congressional primary campaign of Schultz’s Chief Deputy, Jim Gibbons.
That email, which is embedded below, was then forwarded by Schultz to what appears to be his personal email address:
It’s clear that this blog post struck a nerve within the Secretary of State’s office, and as you will see in the coming days, Goldeneye’s blog post was right on the money.
Stay with these next few days as we continue to unravel the story behind’s Schultz’s attack on Jon Huntsman and the serious questions it raises about using public money for political purposes.
1 Comment
desmoinesdem on June 24, 2011 at 3:32 pm.
Amateur hour at the SoS office.