An email that was sent in mid-August from the domain of a Washington State agency to job-seeking veterans could have damaging implications for Sen. Patty Murray in her hotly contested U.S. Senate race against Dino Rossi.

On August 12, a local veteran employment representative in the Vancouver, Wash. office of WorkSource – the public/private joint venture working in tandem with the Washington State Employment Security Department – made a direct appeal from an Employment Security Department email address for vets to get out and start hustling for Patty Murray’s reelection.

The WorkSource representative’s plea to vets read: [emphasis mine]

First I would like to say this is not an endorsement, just a call out to Veterans who may be interested in assisting with a “walk and knock” to remind people to vote. Specifically for Patty Murray. Whether you have voted for her in the past or are thinking of or planning to vote for her, the bottom line is she has done a lot for the Veterans of our community. Take a look at the attachments I have included and if you want to get involved contact Kerala Hise at 360-828-7898 or kerala@pattymurray.com.

WorkSource is a public/private joint venture, not a state agency, which raises the question of whether these communications were merely unethical or quite plainly illegal.

Washington State law strictly prohibits the use of public resources for political campaigning in RCW 42.52.180, but the statute circumscribes only the actions of state officers or state employees and it is unclear whether WorkSource staff fall under the category of state employees. A possible answer may come from an interpretation of the State Attorney General to a question posed on what previously would have seemed an unrelated dead-end.

In November of 2009, a query was sent to Asst. Secretary of State Steve Excell regarding the use of the Washington State seal by The Washington Poll on its website. The Washington Poll is conducted by the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality (WISER). Excell, after conferring with Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office, confirmed that WISER had every right to use the state seal. This confirmation was made on the basis that WISER was a part of the University of Washington which is, in fact, a state agency.

If the University of Washington, with its blend of public and private revenue sources, qualifies as a state agency, it is certainly reasonable to ask whether WorkSource falls under the same heading. After all, WorkSource collects information for the Employment Security Department and facilitates access to a wide array of government programs. The organization’s most heavily used resource – WorkSource’s job listing database – is accessed via a subdirectory in the State government’s domain.

Because an official ESD email address and mail servers (ESD.WA.GOV) were used to transmit campaign materials and conduct political organizing on behalf of the Murray campaign this could represent a potentially serious misuse of public assets by a political campaign.

A formal public records request has been made to the Employment Security Department to obtain the attachments referenced in the email as well as any other communications that may have taken place between WorkSource, Employment Security and the Murray campaign.

A request for comment was sent earlier today to communication director for the Murray campaign, Julie Edwards, without reply.