Hello? Is that you, Ellen?

I got an odd email message yesterday – two copies of it, actually – from Oregon attorney general Ellen Rosenblum:

Wait, there are people calling me on the phone claiming there's a problem with my gadgets and trying to get my personal information? Golly, you don't say!

This is hardly news. It's been going on for years. We get those calls all the time despite our best efforts to block them. Anyone who is not smart enough to hang up on these creeps would have been victimized long before now.

So why the sudden interest in the subject? Could it be because Rosenblum's currently running for re-election?  But the email came from her official state account. Was this campaign literature on the taxpayer's dime? From the state's law enforcement chief? Perish the thought.

But that's not the odd part; that's politics as usual. What was odd was the way the email appeared in my Inbox listing. I use the Gmail phone app (reluctantly, it's a long story), and it sometimes displays a little icon of the sender next to the person's name and the message subject. Check out what it showed on both entries for Rosenblum's email:

Who the heck is that? It's not Ellen Rosenblum. Who is it? Her granddaughter, maybe? A person who ghostwrites for her? A campaign flack? 

And all purporting to come from an official state account.

I'm not sure what happened there, but if the goal was to impress me with the attorney general's internet smarts, it fell a little short.

On a more serious note, a few days ago a friend wrote me complaining that she was still getting fundraising pitches from Rosenblum's campaign. Rosenblum's a lock to win re-election (her Republican opponent is not even a lawyer), and she is giving money away to other Democratic campaigns. So isn't it misleading, my friend asks, for her to be asking people for funds for her campaign when that's not how they're really going to be spent?

If you check Rosenblum out on the state's Orestar website, you'll see that she's awash with cash, with $243,000 in the bank. And yes, she is sharing the wealth with other Dems. Perfectly legal, I guess (I'm no campaign finance law expert), but it is right for her to keep pitching for, or even accepting, dough?

UPDATE, a few hours later: A reader suggests:

Still, very curious.