COMMENTARY | It began with a funny email last month. I found something from a political campaign in my inbox ? but it was addressed to my husband instead of me.
"That's strange," I thought. Other than being a registered Republican, I didn't see how my email address was obtained by Bachmann for President. I had never made contact with that office. Most political campaign materials came through the U.S. Postal Service. I have given my email address to just one campaign office, and it isn't Bachmann's. So I turned to my friends on Facebook and asked how this oddly addressed message could have come to me.
After a few back-and-forth wall posts, about seven of us stated that there was a Bachmann email in all of our inboxes, and suggested that the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators (NICHE), a homeschool support group to which almost none of us belonged, was the source of the email.
Wednesday, I got an email from NICHE's president, publicly seen first in The Iowa Republican. Getting emails from this group without a paid membership is not unusual. Although I haven't had a membership for about 10 years, the group sends newsletters through the postal service at least once a year and occasional short-notice emails to anyone who makes electronic contact but does not buy a membership. No email privacy policy is listed online, in their emails, or in the group's "Homeschool Iowa" magazine. There is an option to "unsubscribe" listed on all NICHE email. On this particular day, the email was an admission that NICHE's email list was used twice by Bachmann's office without permission from the Board of Directors or Bachmann, and an apology for its occurrence. One reporter noted that a NICHE board member (as listed in the group's newsletter dated Summer 2011), Barb Heki, is a Bachmann staffer.
In the past, Heki has sent Bachmann notices to another home school group to which I belong. This is a very common practice in my other home school support groups (I belong to five) whether the group is religion-based or not. Members alert everyone in the group about political happenings and list ways to involve your children as a way to give civics lessons and teach service through hands-on volunteerism.
Mike Demastus, the pastor of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, posted on his public Facebook wall, "I would like to say a public word of support for someone I fully respect and trust ... Barb Heki. If anyone has ever dragged and dropped the wrong file into the wrong folder on a PC you can appreciate how easy it would be to make a mistake like this. Barb is absolutely integrous [sic] and clear in all her dealings. The only thing she is guilty of is being super zealous and passionate for the cause of Christ."
Regardless of her intention, her action is giving NICHE opponents one more reason to stay out of the group, and giving liberal voters more fodder against Bachmann over at the Huffington Post and the New Civil Rights Movement.
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