Email War

On Thursday, the Boston Globe reported that upon the end of Mitt Romney's tenure as Massachusetts State Governor, 11 high ranking gubernatorial officials had legally purchased their government issued hard drives before Romney left office. The purchased hard drives had contained a majority of the emails and correspondence written during the Romney Administration. According to the Globe report, Deval Patrick, the current Massachusetts State Governor, "has been bombarded with inquiries for records from the Romney era" but "has no electronic record of any Romney administration e-mails" (Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer).

Consequently, the Globe report provoked a response from the Romney campaign. Gov. Patrick, a long time Obama supporter, has been labelled by the Romney team as "an opposition research arm of the Obama re-election campaign." In direct response to the report, Romney's representatives have fired back by requesting copies of any emails sent between the Patrick Administration and Obama's top political aids. Furthermore, Romney campaign manager Matt Rhodes has accused the Patrick staff of supplying the Boston Globe "with copies of cancelled checks from 2006 documenting the lawful purchase of computer equipment by departing members of the Romney administration. This action was nothing more than a weak attempt to disparage practices that you know were in complete compliance with the law" (Serafin Gomez).

The Democratic National Committee responded with a request for all emails pertaining to the purchase of computer hard drives, including several embarrassing search keywords, such as "flip-flop" and "destroy records" (Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer). The chair of the DNC, Mrs. Wasserman Shultz,  commented, "Mitt Romney was planning to run for president towards the end of his administration, and the public has the right to know what kinds of communication were going on while he was beginning to plan that campaign. It is absolutely unconscionable, inexcusable that the records of those conversations or any conversations would have been wiped clean of servers"(Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer).

Romney's communications director, Gail Gitcho, rationalized the purchase of the hard drives by stating that Romney's staff probably did not want their records to be subject to the "oppositions dig, which is what we are seeing happening now." Gitcho summed up the accusations as a slanderous tactic utilized by an administration that will "say and do anything to hold onto their power" (Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer).  The Romney campaign has asserted that despite the loss of certain hard drives, Romney has archived 700 boxes of public documents–press releases, speeches, and the like (Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer).

Although Mitt Romney has not officially become the Republican candidate, his nomination is more likely than not. Therefore, the Obama administration has begun allocating resources in order to run against the former Massachusetts Governor. They have attempted to label Romney as a "flip-flopper" who lacks core values and will do anything necessary to win. Mrs. Wasserman Schutz commented in a CNN interview, "Mitt Romney has a very clear track record of trying to reinvent himself, start over, flip-flop on major–issues" (Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer).


Works Cited: Jessica Yellin and Senior Producer Ted Metzer. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/18/romney-vs-democrats-war-over-emails-escalates/?hpt=hp_bn3
Serafin Gomez.http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/11/17/romney-camp-ma-dem-gov-opposition-research-arm-obama-campaign-0