Chris Collins: Career Politician

A career politician to me is someone who is constantly campaigning for his or her next big run for office, similar to what County Executive Chris Collins is trying to pull with his newest stunt on the new erie.gov website.

Remember the day after primary day? Collins staff used the official @eriecountyexec twitter account to electioneer on behalf of his handpicked candidates.  The tweets were taken down about as fast as we called him out on it and since then it has only been used for “official county business”.

A few weeks ago Erie County launched a new and improved website. On Collins’ page, he links to his “social media” profiles including twitter, youtube and facebook.

If it weren’t for the content on some of these profiles, there would be nothing wrong with it. But his youtube account , titled “collins4ourfuture” is the same name of the County Executives official campaign account and includes three videos paid for by that campaign and his political speech and appearence at last years Republican National Convention.

The facebook account is a bit suspicious since it is not a “fan page” or something that is publicly available to all. You have to be handpicked (See picture) to be included as a “friend” of the county executive.

I don’t think we’ll be added as a “friend” anytime soon, since most of his staff has already “de-friended” me over the past few months, but if any of you are fortunate enough to be in this exclusive facebook club, maybe you can tell us what kind of content is being shared with the taxpayers of Erie County on our dime?

There is nothing wrong with the County Executive’s office or any public official using social media tools to inform the public about “taxpayer funded business”, but this is not the way.

This is nothing but using a taxpayer funded website as a campaign tool by soon to be “career politican” Chris Collins and should be taken down immediately.