Some Citizens Unhappy With State Official’s Spam Text Overnight

STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: State attorneys general enforce both state and federal laws. Because they are sworn to uphold the United States' constitution and laws as well as the state's, they often decline to defend the state in federal lawsuits. - Wikipedia

Some Louisiana citizens are unhappy with one state official's spam text that was sent overnight last night.

One citizen, an educator, posted to her Facebook Page to vent about the text. The status update included a screencap of the text with the comment "Political texts at 10PM????"

I, too, received this text, but it was much later than 10pm.

Do you see the time stamp? 3:57 am.  AM. As in "the morning" AM. This is, simply put, not acceptable.

Regardless of your political affiliation, I would make the assumption that if you are on a "regular" work/sleep schedule, an overnight text isn't the most welcome. When I get an overnight text, the first thoughts that race through my mind are "Is my family OK?"  "Are my friends OK?" "Do I have to rush into work?"; thoughts that get your heart and mind racing.  It took me a while to get back to sleep. (Why don't I put my phone on DO NOT DISTURB, you ask? If you do ask that question, I'll ask one, too: Do you victim-blame often, or just today?)

I called his state office today and the person who answered the phone was SO VERY POLITE. She explained to me in very simple terms that his state office had nothing to with the text, and that complaints need to be directed toward his campaign headquarters. I reminded her that he is a public official and that I wanted to file my complaint with his office, and she reminded me that she was given her instructions, and then prepared to give me his campaign headquarters phone number (she didn't need to, as it was on my list of calls to make).

I thanked her for her time, offered to send her some cookies because I couldn't imagine that she was having a good day. She thanked me for the offer and politely declined (I think that there is a law stating that state employees can't accept cookies from citizens or something). If you do decide to call his state office or his campaign headquarters, remember this: the person answering the phone is probably not responsible for sending the text, so please be concise with your concern and be polite, as they are fielding many calls today from angry people. Remember, you can be angry and polite at the same time.

Was it the politician that sent the text? More than likely not: it was probably some volunteer or intern or maybe the person who gets paid to be the social media expert for the campaign. Why is our anger directed at the politician? Well, I do believe it was a famous politician that said: "The buck stops here"; it's because his face is on the campaign button, not the social media expert's face.  (EDIT: I just got off of the phone with Jeff Landry's "campaign manager" at the Broussard office, her name was Angelle. She could not provide the name of the company who sent the text(s), but did confirm that the texts were supposed to stop in the early evening and that something went wrong.)

Will I allow this errant text debacle to affect my vote? Not consciously. I don't want to vote for my friends, my party, or because I did or didn't receive a text: I want to vote on policies. I want to vote for the candidate I think will best bring our state into the 21st century. I want to vote for the politician who isn't a member of the good-ol'-boy/girl network. I want to vote for someone who hasn't been influenced by special interest groups. (I realize that this severely limits my choices.)

Public officials, politicians, other spam/scam employees, please do us a favor: limit your aggravating calls/texts to ZERO times per day, as I know that many people would appreciate it. Besides, having the label "politician" is bad enough; don't make us add the adjectives "insensitive", "out-of-touch", and "unempathetic" to the front of that label because, even if it wasn't you who sent the text, it was you.

Rant over,  carry on.

(Wiki)