New details from federal court records show how a former Mobile County official’s office allegedly helped funnel thousands of taxpayer email addresses into a 2013 mayoral campaign, an episode now central to a federal fraud case.
According to court records, Mobile County License Commissioner Kim Hastie’s office pulled email addresses of county residents from a government database in the days before the August 2013 mayoral runoff and passed them along to the campaign of Sandy Stimpson, who was challenging incumbent Mayor Sam Jones. Court records state that Hastie instructed an employee to email ‘everyone within Mobile’s city limits’ an endorsement statement backing Stimpson. When the employee warned that sending such an email would be improper, Hastie allegedly directed the employee to download the addresses onto a flash drive instead. The employee complied, fearing retaliation, and the list eventually reached Stimpson’s campaign consultants.
The day before the election, the Stimpson campaign sent a mass email to the addresses pulled from the county database. The message, titled as a communication from Hastie, featured her endorsement and a photo of her supporting Stimpson’s candidacy. Stimpson went on to defeat Jones with more than 53 percent of the vote.
Leaders of the political consulting firm that ran Stimpson’s digital campaign said in interviews that they did not solicit or pay for the license commission’s email list and that volunteers routinely forwarded contact lists to the campaign from a variety of sources. They said the campaign’s broader digital operation included contributions from more than 1,700 donors, roughly 100,000 phone calls made on Stimpson’s behalf, and tens of thousands of email addresses collected through other channels. A spokesman for Stimpson said the campaign relied on its outside consultants to run its digital outreach in accordance with the law.
The email episode resurfaced after Hastie and her husband were indicted roughly 15 months after the election on charges of failing to report more than $58,000 in income to the IRS tied to land transactions and timber-clearing work. Prosecutors later added charges alleging Hastie coordinated the scheme to funnel the county email addresses to the mayoral campaign. Hastie’s former deputy license commissioner also faces separate fraud-related charges in the case.
Court records show Hastie’s office had separately hired a political consulting firm to build a social media presence and produce a newsletter promoting her proposal to merge the license and revenue commission offices, a plan she said would save Mobile County taxpayers roughly $1 million. The newsletters featured testimonials praising her office’s customer service.
The case remains a significant example of how county election-season operations in Mobile have come under scrutiny by federal investigators, and it continues to work its way through the courts as both sides prepare for further proceedings.