A DeKalb alderwoman running for state representative in Illinois' 76th district is accused of using city email lists to solicit campaign contributions from city employees.
Carolyn "Morris" Zasada represents Ward 1 in DeKalb and is running in a contested primary race as a Democrat in the district which includes portions of Bureau, LaSalle and DeKalb counties in north central Illinois.
In a letter obtained by WNIJ, the Office of DeKalb County State's Attorney Rick Amato issued a cease and desist letter dated Feb. 7 to Zasada.
According to the letter, Amato's office says Zasada utilized City of DeKalb e-mail lists and possibly computer systems to solicit campaign contributions from employees of the City.
In addition to instructing Zasada to cease and desist such fundraising activities, the letter reads, "Employees of the City should not be made to feel that their jobs are dependent on providing funding for a political campaign. This should go without saying, yet we are now driven to remind you of this activity's implications."
The letter cites the regulations of 5 ILCS 430/5-15 and 5 ILCS 430/10-10 through 10-40 of the state ofIllinois Employees Ethics Act prohibiting political activities through prohibited sources.
Additionally the letter reads,"While we are not going to provide the names of all those that have reported this so as to afford them whistleblower protections, we have numerous witnesses seeking intervention. Thus, we are hopeful that this correspondence is all that will be necessary to stop the behavior."
In response, Zasada tells WNIJ that she was in the process of working with legal counsel to put out an appropriate message to those who she says erroneously received the mass emails.
Zasada says that communication would have included the following statement:
I'm reaching out to apologize. I uploaded all of my personal contacts into my campaign email list to make sure everyone I knew was getting updates about my campaign. The campaign emails included fundraising appeals. Initially, I did not remove my government email contacts from my personal list before adding them to my campaign list. Once I was aware, we attempted to rectify the situation, I went through my campaign list of 2,000+ people and unsubscribed every city email. City employees should no longer get any sort of fundraising communications in their city email from my campaign. I had NO intention of putting any city employees in an uncomfortable situation and I'm very sorry to everyone who was affected by this unfortunate and inadvertent error.
In a call with WNIJ on Saturday, Zasada added:
The last thing I would want is for a city employee to think that I was leveraging my role as an Alderman to solicit funds. I would never want to misuse a role that I'm in to make city employees feel uncomfortable. I am very sorry for the mistake, and it should not happen again.
And to be clear, we stopped sending out emails to the city people before we got the notice from the State's Attorney. The last email that we are aware of, I believe, may have gone out around January 27th.
Zasada faces Cohen Barnes and Amy "Murri" Briel in the March 19 Democratic primary. Liz Bishop and Crystal Loughran face each other in the Republican primary. Incumbent Lance Yednock is not seeking re-election.
