Hoekstra names campaign operations director

Rep. Pete Hoekstra has named David Mroz as the Director of Operations for his gubernatorial campaign in 2010. Mroz was previously the Director of Field and Political Operations in the state for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. In that capacity, Mroz was involved in a minor controversy when an email he wrote last July after the McCain campaign withdrew from Michigan was leaked to Politico.

That email admitted that the campaign used “sockpuppets” to distribute letters to the editor, ostensibly written by individuals in the community but in reality written by the Romney campaign:

Letters to the Editor Program

This is a key to increasing the Romney name ID and also carrying Mitt’s message to all voters. We have seen a lack of interest in many local media outlets to cover Presidential events thus far this year, but the letters written to the editor continue to get published and read daily across the Country.

We are looking for 2 types of Volunteers for the Letters Program

1. Sample Letter Writers. Each week you will receive a “topic of the week” and be asked to write and submit a sample letter to be distributed.
2. Letter Distribution. Later in the week you will receive all the sample letters and pick one to send in to your local newspaper.

This is not unusual, of course. Jonathan Martin feigned shock — SHOCK — that it was going on, as nearly all campaigns do that sort of thing. But it’s unusual to have the internal email discussing it leaked to the public.