Scandal? Nah.
A few minutes ago, we checked our Twitter feed and found something surprising. Yesterday, in an 11.44pm tweet from her campaign's account, Representative Mary Ann Taylor (R - Texas) decried fellow Texan Republican Governor Hubert Jass:
Amercia: Is THIS what you want in a candidate?? We want honest answers. #ElectionClass twitter.com/TeamMaryAnn201…
— Team Mary Ann Taylor (@TeamMaryAnn2012) September 25, 2012
Taylor's picture of the Tweet does not include a time stamp of the tweet, other than "12 minutes". However, Jass, some 24 minutes previous to Taylor's tweet, apologized to Rotolo:
@rotolo My deepest apology. It seems I am under fire once again. Whomever is responsible we ask you please stop.
— Gov. Hugh Jass (@GovHughJass) September 25, 2012
The "under fire" Jass is referring to is when his campaign was allegedly hacked last week, spinning of a firestorm of angry tweets from much of Amercia and eventual denouncement of a false endorsement from none other than Anthony Rotolo, Supreme Court/Referee-in-Chief/Pope/Whatever of Amercia. (We won't go into more detail here, since Jessica Murray has already done an excellent job on Storify. You can view that here.)
Now, it seems, Jass has been hacked again.
Jass's campaign jumped to the governor's aid, with five of the governor's seven campaign staff (about 70% of the campaign) tweeting something to the effect of "we were hacked!" Between 11.11pm and 11.43pm, a flurry of Jass staffer tweets were issued, backing the governor:
I think people need to understand #electionclass is in fact a class... Maybe get a hobby?
— Allie Lichtenstein (@allierl) September 25, 2012
Hilarious that people actually care that much. @govhughjass #ischoolproblems #problems #ElectionClass
— Max (@MaxGreenberg) September 25, 2012
The fact that someone actually spent time hacking our #ElectionClass twitter account.............
— Jordan Elkin (@Jhelkin) September 25, 2012
Reminder to all in Amercia that hacking is unlawful... Even in Amercia. irongeek.com/i.php?page=com… #ElectionClass
— Ben Slutzky (@syrBRS) September 25, 2012
Here's what's important: We don't buy it. Full disclosure: we don't have proof. But there's too much circumstantial evidence for this to look like pure coincidence.
Best we can tell, both hacks were fake. The first was a goofy governor; the second was a panicked campaign staff trying to backpedal. Here's why we think this hack was less than genuine:
A) The first hack:
Jass never fired anyone. - As of this post, all of Jass's original seven campaign staff members seem to be with the campaign, even though Jass announced last week that an aid had been fired in response to the Twitter "hack":
Already happened. Aid terminated. MT @electionclass: will we see our first campaign firing from the @govhughjass scandal? #ElectionClass
— Gov. Hugh Jass (@GovHughJass) September 19, 2012
(If nothing else, we're still pretty mad about this because we're still looking for interns.)
Jass never held a presser to explain the last hack. - Jass promised Amercian media a press conference to explain last week's hack:
MEDIa ADVISORY: press conference with details on recent events this weekend, time TBA. Let's come together. #ElectionClass
— Gov. Hugh Jass (@GovHughJass) September 19, 2012
This never happened, either.
Jass hasn't taken this campaign seriously. For crying out loud, his Twitter handle is @GovHughJass - not @GovHubertJass, or @GovernorJass - both of which were available handles as of this post. Also, see more of Murray's work.
B) The second hack:
Jass was in apparently control of his Twitter account as of 8.52pm, meaning the "hack" must have occurred in a fairly small window - between 8.52pm and 11.11pm. At 8.52pm, the governor tweeted a picture of himself, his wife and his dog. Either he was in control of his Twitter account, or the hacker was remarkably affable.
Relaxing on the porch with Mrs. Jass and Tucker #ElectionClass twitter.com/GovHughJass/st…
— Gov. Hugh Jass (@GovHughJass) September 25, 2012
The content of the hack was pretty benign. We aren't hackers, but from what we've read, they have a tendency to go hard or go home. Tweeting "oh my god becky look at her butt" manages to clearly be a hack while also not being inflammatory enough to make the campaign look obscene if they were found to have issued the tweet intentionally.
The only evidence we have of the Tweet came from a fellow Texas Republican. Not damning in and of itself, but interesting to note. Evidence of the Tweet did not come from an independent media outlet or Democratic competitor, but one of Jass's colleagues. Admittedly, we are still in primary season, so the candidates are squaring off for the coveted nomination. Even so, the whistleblower came from within Jass's own party AND state. And if Taylor was feeling uncertain about the primary in any way, a suddenly vacant governor's mansion come November might look really nice.
Jass's campaign's response was really, really fast, and really, really concerted. - 70% of the campaign's staffers weighed in on the issue within a thirty minute window. That's a response time to make emergency workers jealous, and included:
The first staffer apology/hack claim came before Jass's public apology. Independent of the conspiracy we paint here, this suggests that Jass has a less than perfect grasp on his campaign, a problem in and of itself.
Following the hack, Rotolo made the class discuss how to react to the campaign. This was NOT one of the options, and is admittedly a pretty clever recovery.
Jass hasn't been the best for responding to media inquiries - we STILL haven't had a presser, dang it - but we'll see how he responds to this one.
It's about time Amercia had some answers.
