On Monday, May 13, scores of Hopkinton residents received an email from Nasiba Mannan encouraging them to vote for Peter Mimmo and Kyla McSweeney for Select Board.
Ms. Mannan serves as Vice Chair of Hopkinton’s Board of Health, and is the wife of Select Board Vice Chair Shahidul Mannan.
I hope this message finds you well. As a friendly reminder, we have an important town election approaching on Monday, May 20th at the Middle School, running from 7 am to 8 pm. Your vote matters, so please mark your calendars and participate in shaping the future of our community.
In this election, we have one contested race – the Select board and it is perhaps the most significant one for our town. I am proud to support Kyla McSweeney and Peter Mimmo for the Select board.
Also, if you are already supporting them and would like to display a sign or write an endorsement letter, please get in touch with me. Both Kyla and Peter have a track record of service to our town and demonstrate qualifications and dedication in championing policies that promote economic opportunity and environmental sustainability. They will prioritize crucial issues ranging from investing in education and healthcare to advocating for affordable housing and infrastructure development, while fostering diversity.
Although Ms. Mannan signed the letter as a “private citizen”, some recipients expressed confusion about how they ended up on the mailing list.
“We all (me, my wife, and my friends) got an email from Nasiba Mannan (personal email, attached),” wrote one person. “She pretends to remind us of the election, but her purpose is asking people to vote for two democratic candidates. I am not sure how many town residents receive email from her, but it is a lot as I know. Here is my concern: She is on our board of health. How can she get so many email addresses of town residents? On the Board of Health, does she have access to emails of all our town residents? I remember we registered our email address for Covid tracing and vaccines. If so, did she download the health email list to her personal email account and use it for election?”
HopNews contacted Hopkinton Health Director Shaun McAuliffe for comment.
“She [Mannan] has no access to contact tracing records,” said McAuliffe. “That information is protected and would not be made available even under a freedom of information act request.” McAuliffe emphasized that releasing such information would put at-risk his licensing with the state.
Ms. Mannan was also reached for a comment.
“These are from my personal email contacts from various previous interactions. I am active in the Asian American community and have interacted with many, even in group emails for many events and issues. Many emails were sent to all these same addresses from me in previous years on various Asian American event, town issues etc…Also to clarify, I used only contacts from my personal email and not from board of health. And to confirm I don’t have access to any BOH list serve or contact,” she wrote.
Why is the subject of this email ‘Reminder to Town Election” when it exclusively features Democratic candidates? It appears to be heavily biased in favor of the Hopkinton Democrats. If one fails to acknowledge the possibility that Ms. Mannan used her official elected position to access these email addresses, they are overlooking a potential misuse of power.
It’s completely within the domain of the Hopkinton Democrats to aggressively influence the outcome of the election, and this is just one example.
So much for no party labels next to candidate names. The Big Blue Dem Machine is revving up! Let’s keep Hopkinton in the firm hands of HDTC! After all, they have been doing such a great job, right? 🙂
Outstanding work with the article photo
This feels super like spam and I would report it as such if I received it.
It might be a private email, but feels like spam. Unfortunately, political messaging spam isn’t covered by any guidelines currently.
I’m super uncomfortable with how this was sent and how the list was generated, but there isn’t any problem with an individual receiving a large mailing list and then sending unsolicited bulk emails like this.
If certain other candidates wanted, there are definitely ways to ask others to provide resources and emails to do the same for any other political message. If this is done as a political message, you don’t have to worry about anything but the platform.
How ironic that Darlene Hayes is right smack in the middle of the photo.
I noticed that as well…