In recent weeks, the topic of taxpayer-funded political mailings has been at the forefront of the race for Nassau County executive.
At issue is whether local politicians should be prevented from sending out taxpayer-funded letters and flyers that accomplish no clear purpose other than partisan self-promotion.
Democratic candidate Laura Curran has proposed stricter controls on political mailings, while Republican candidate Jack Martins has claimed that current rules are sufficient to discourage abuse.
One thing I found interesting was a quote given to Blank Slate Media by George Maragos, the current Nassau County Comptroller and Curran’s Democratic primary opponent.
In it, Maragos suggested that local politicians should use “social media platforms” as a free and more efficient way of reaching their constituents.
That quote got me thinking about something I’ve seen one of Martins’ close political allies, state Sen. Elaine Phillips, trying out on Facebook the last couple of months.
Sen. Phillips, like most politicians, posts once or twice a day to her official Facebook page.
If you follow Phillips’ page, these posts will automatically appear in your Facebook feed.
If you don’t, you can still manually view these posts by visiting her page.
Well, apparently, Phillips decided that her posts weren’t reaching enough voters in her district, because she’s been paying Facebook to insert select posts into her constituents’ Facebook feeds.
I know this, because Sen. Phillips’ posts have been appearing as “sponsored” posts (essentially ads) in my Facebook feed for the past couple of months.
This raises a number of ethical issues.
Firstly, who is paying for these sponsored posts? Are taxpayers paying for them? Is Phillips paying for them with campaign funds?
If taxpayers are paying for the posts, then Phillips appears to have found a creative way to engage in the same partisan self-promotion being debated at the county level.
Most of these sponsored posts do nothing to inform Phillips’ constituency and merely contain photos of her attending local events or visiting local businesses.
If, on the other hand, Phillips is using campaign funds, that raises the question of whether it’s ethical to use campaign funds to “sponsor” content published using an official government channel.
Specifically regarding the posts where Phillips appears at or mentions local businesses, is it ethical to pay Facebook to advertise said posts using any source of funds?
Could these sponsored posts be considered paid ads for said businesses?
Another troubling issue is that these sponsored posts disappear from constituents’ Facebook feeds after a period specified by Phillips, leaving nothing behind to scrutinize (unlike traditional mailings).
I would normally suggest that the Senate Committee on Ethics and Internal Governance investigate this matter, but guess who the chairwoman of that committee is.
That’s right; it’s Sen. Phillips.
Sen. Phillips needs to come clean and voluntarily release a list of all social media posts she’s paid to advertise since taking office (including how much she spent and how she paid for each of them).
She owes it to her constituents to be accountable and transparent.
Matthew Zeidman
New Hyde Park
