Greg Abbott quoted:
"Subd. 3. Pictures prohibited. When a statutory or home rule charter city, county, town, school district, metropolitan or regional agency, or other political subdivision of this state, issues a report or other publication for public distribution to inform the general public of the activities of the political subdivision, the report or publication must not include pictures of elected officials nor any other pictorial or graphic device that would tend to attribute the publication to an individual or groups of individuals instead of the political subdivision. Directories of public services provided by the political subdivision are exempt from this subdivision."
Peter Vevang writes:
I think this is an important quote. I am not an expert on the law, but from what was quoted, it isn't clear to me that the mayor using his picture in a mailing is illegal. The key phrase here is:
"must not include pictures of elected officials nor any other pictorial or graphic device that would tend to attribute the publication to an individual or groups of individuals instead of the political subdivision."
To translate that phrase into English, don't call it a mailing from a particular office and then mail pictures of people from some completely separate office, group or individual. The picture is attributed to the mayoral "subdivision", and has a picture of the mayor who, as it happens, embodies the mayoral "subdivision". They aren't calling this a mayoral mailing and sending out pictures endorsing DFL candidates for other offices like city Council or Park Board. As far as I can see, this isn't a smoking gun, this little quote actually proves the legality of what the mayor did, unless I am reading this wrong.
If this principle holds true, than all of the stories about this mailing are in error, and a terrible journalistic mistake has been made, and the people responsible should apologize immediately and retract what they said. It isn't right to tar a good person's reputation based on evidence like this. I think we need to reserve judgement until things become a bit clearer. I repect both candidates for mayor, they are both great leaders, I would hate for this race to be decided by something like this. It seems kind of cheap.
Peter Vevang Audubon
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