As I noted earlier today, there’s a shadow John Branam for city council website—but it redirects to a Willamette Week pieces that’s not entirely flattering. This afternoon, Branam responded to the anonymous attack, saying “This is a strange and unfortunate development. I’m hopeful this city council race will focus on ideas about Portland’s future and will not be about playing silly games. That someone anonymously registered a similar domain name is just weird and cowardly; especially in Portland politics—or, at least how I would like to see Portland politics play out.”

I sent a longshot email to the anonymous registration email address, which looked like it’d redirect into some inbox that even robots never checked.

I was wrong—somebody did get it, and replied via a web-base greeting card set to send from my email address to my email address (ooo, very cloak and dagger!).

Here’s what he/she/they had to say:

As the candidates in the city council work to define who they are to the public, their past is just as important as what they say now and in the future. John is very media slick and coupled with Phil (Mr. Mercury) they have the ability to influence stories especially in the Mercury and the WW. To be fair to John, I’ll stop the redirection of the website in question but I’d like hear him give a clear explanation to the Willamette Week story. The redirection of the website pointed to a story that had been previously posted and that he never disputed at the time. He says, “Also, as far as the WWeek news story that the site points to, it hardly seems ‘newsworthy’ that I purchased a book by a well-known NPR correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner. The ‘news’ story’s inference was that it was inappropriate for a black man to give out a book about black America. I don’t know why anyone would want to revisit that story.”

He DOES NOT mention why he would give the book in the first place. There is NO story that he purchased the book. No one cares that he purchased it. People are free to read whatever they please. The REAL STORY is why would he choose to distribute it to his colleagues in the education system. I stress the story is that he didn’t give the book to friends but co-workers including the Superintendent of Portland Public Schools. When we are trying to choose our future leaders of the city its important to find out what motivates them and what thinking lies behind their actions. He can put this whole thing to rest by saying what his intentions were by passing this book out at work and what were the reactions of those he gave it to. End of story. Goodnight. Thanks!

I’ve asked the Branam campaign if they’d like to respond further…