Uncomfortable. For the record, I was not aware that Mat Helman was also Senate Guru, not that disclosure was required. Rather than trying to describe what happened, I am simply going to reprint most of DavidNYC’s post outing Mat. It’s important to emphasize that, as far as we are aware, the D’Alessandro campaign itself was not aware of Mat’s activities in this respect, and therefore it should not reflect on D’Alessandro’s candidacy.
Blogging as Senate Guru, Mat Helman has been a diarist at Daily Kos and the Swing State Project and maintained his own blog for several years. He is also a political operative and has worked on several campaigns. Until recently, he kept a careful distinction between his work and his blogging. Unfortunately, he stepped over the line, badly.
First, he created and began using a new account, MassDemActivist, to diary at both Daily Kos and Swing State Project while he was still actively using the Senate Guru account. While abandoning one account and permanently moving to another is acceptable, usage of the accounts must not overlap.
Second, two of the three diaries posted under the MassDemActivist account promoted Mac D’Alessandro, a candidate primarying Stephen Lynch (MA-09), without disclosing that the diarist was a high-level volunteer anticipating future paid work with the campaign. These diaries were also critical of Lynch, and attacking an opponent under cover of a sockpuppet is one of the most unacceptable things you can do in the blogosphere.
We confronted Mat and offered him the opportunity to make his own apology in the diaries. Unfortunately, while he acknowledged his actions, the apology diary he drafted was inadequate. To his credit, he wrote:
For what it’s worth, the campaign had no knowledge of my blogging – this was all on me. Again, as a citizen of the blogosphere, I should have recognized that any relationship should have been clearly and explicitly disclosed, and not doing so was simply poor judgment in a haste to get information out to the blogosphere. Again, it was simply boneheaded, and I apologize.
But in other ways he attempted to disclaim the implications of his actions. For that reason, having first given him the chance to speak for himself, we are making his deception public.
From what’s in the post, it sounds like Swing State Project did the right thing. Sock-puppetry is an extremely bad practice that anyone who cares about the blogosphere should oppose.
Anyone with questions about this kind of thing on BMG should refer to the Rules of the Road, which do address this subject. If you still have questions, feel free to email any of the editors.
A lot of that goes on here without consequences, so it’s only natural that he would have that lax attitude toward sockpuppetry elsewhere.
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p>Full disclosure: I kind of know Mat. And Mac. I’m not getting involved in that race but I’d vote for Mac if I lived in his district.
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p>On a related note, I’ve tried at least three times to lay out all my biases/endorsements in my profile, but it keeps disappearing. How do I fix that?
the problem is that the “bio” field in the Profile is very limited – only 200 characters or so. Try putting in something really short and see if it sticks. If that doesn’t work, email me and we should be able to fix it.
Go to your profile page, click reset first, then put in any of the changes you want, then click save. That should do it, if I remember correctly. I know that if you don’t do things in a precise order, it doesn’t seem to work. So if that’s wrong, a little trial and error will fix it.
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p>How do you PARSE that? If a campaign ever does pay you when you’re foolish enough to volunteer, there’s a ‘Who, ME?’ reaction to a certain extent. At that, anticipation is subjective, and an offer of a paying gig could be a genuine surprise.
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p>This isn’t partisan. Me, I’ve never been paid by a campaign, but I’ve volunteered to an extent that I was producing more than those who were. If you ARE paid, you should disclose, but what duty is there to disclose if a volunteer?
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p>I don’t know any personalites involved, but it strikes me that it’s the sock puppetry is the crime here, not the potential of being paid.
I hope that Mat will address this issue and that people will reserve their judgment until such time. Full disclosure- I worked with Mat at MassBudget a few years ago. I’m as surprised as anyone to learn of this, but it does little to diminish my opinion of Mat as a hard working guy who cares deeply about improving our politics and our public policy.
…well, if not quite nothing then still not very much. I think the clarification that he was not speaking for the campaign was appropriate. However, unless we decide to say that all volunteers should also disclose such I think we run the risk of tying ourselves in knots over which ones should. What constitutes a “high-level” volunteer? What is the true likelihood that it will become a paid gig?
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p>A couple of disclosures of my own: I know and am friendly with Mat. I’ve also found myself in similar relationships with campaigns from time to time.
My understanding is that a sock puppet is one online identity being used to support another online identity, both the same underlying person. For example:
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p>That is clearly wrong, because it makes posters look like they have multiple supporters when it is really just one person.
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p>It is possible that Mat Helman did not want to co-mingle his existing longstanding online personality with his support for a specific candidate. In the world of pseudonyms — where no one has to identify themselves to post — that seems legitimate to me.
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p>If there was no cross-support between the two identities, I don’t see the problem, because the big “crime” here seems to simply be that he had a previous online identity. If he had not posted before, were his actions legitimate?
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p>I don’t get this accusation:
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p>Is there anything substantial there beyond an allegation of what the future could bring? Are people suggesting that it is wrong for campaign volunteers to post anonymously? Or is there a certain level where people have to identify themselves?
The Dorchester Reporter thought he was on staff.
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p>I think that common sense is the important thing. And I do think that there is a different standard for someone who is listed as the press contact for a campaign and for someone who is volunteering a few hours per week.
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p>I know that this could be seen as critical of Mat. That is not my intention. But having seen the issues around disclosing and not disclosing I wanted to throw in my two cents.
And until such time as Ernie Boch III (or EB3) is properly identified, I find these so-called “rules of the road” to be completely and utterly compromised at BMG, to the point of being laughable. While I enjoy the BMG site a lot and read it nearly every day, any claim to a moral high ground is lost when EB3 posts.
Anonymity is allowed at BMG, as the Rules make perfectly clear. EB3 is a highly opinionated BMGer, as are many others. If he has a conflict of interest that he isn’t disclosing, he’s breaking the rules, and we wish he wouldn’t do that. But as far as I know, that’s not the case. Do you know differently?
My concern is that since Anonymity is allowed at BMG, Mat was not breaking the letter of the Rules, but the spirit of the Rules.
Since no one knows whether or not EB3 has a conflict of interest, but his posts often degenerate into personal attacks and rants IMHO, he is also not breaking the letter of the Rules, but is he breaking the spirit of the Rules?
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p>I would suggest that neither Mat nor EB3 is breaking the letter of the Rules BUT both are breaking the spirit of the Rules, in different ways. As such, I find it difficult to be judgemental about one and totally accepting of the other.
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p>Ergo, I will accept both with or without their personal flaws and demons, and IMHO declare this story line insignificant and irrelevant and the moralizing and outrage on the same level as the petty spat between Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle.