North Yarmouth Academy alumni recently received a mass email from a fellow alumnus supporting Bruce Poliquin's candidacy for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

Then they received this email from the school:

From: Kate Putnam
Date: September 28, 2009 11:32:30 AM EDT
Subject: sincere apology

Dear friends,

It came to my attention last Friday morning that several NYA alums had received an unsolicited political endorsement via email. It is a firm NYA policy to never release any personal information, including addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, to outside members of our community for any purposes other than helping a fellow classmate plan a reunion get together. As you can imagine, we were equally as surprised when we heard about it. After some research, we discovered what happened. An email was sent from the Alumni office by a new intern to many of our alums encouraging them to join our NYA facebook group. Inadvertently, the email addresses of the recipients were not blind copied . Subsequently, one alumnus took the liberty of using that list even though he was aware of the school’s policy and had previously been refused access to our lists. I am very sorry you were contacted in this way. I have spoken with both Mr. Hunter and Mr. Poliquin and expressed my disappointment with their decision to appropriate addresses in this way. I can also assure you that further procedures will be instituted so this kind of breech won't happen again. We take our responsibilities to protect confidentiality very seriously. Once again, I apologize for our error and any discomfort it has caused. Please don't hesitate to call or email me.

Best Regards,

Kate
Kate Putnam
Chief Development Officer

Pro-Poliquin email after the jump.

From: ben hunter
Date: September 25, 2009 7:46:57 PM EDT
Subject: Attention NYA Alumni

Hello My Fellow NYA Alumni:

My name is Ben Hunter, and I graduated from our fine Academy in 1986.

I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know about an important member of the NYA community who could use our help–my good friend Bruce Poliquin.

Yes, Bruce is running for Governor of the great State of Maine in 2010!

As such, I'd like to briefly talk about his credentials for this important post, elaborate on Bruce's pivotal contributions to NYA, and let you know why I think he's a fantastic candidate for the Blaine House.

Bruce was born and raised in Waterville, and for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting him, he's an incredibly smart, driven and charismatic man whose unsullied idealism fuels his Gubernatorial aspirations.

Bruce's background is in business, economics and finance, and he thinks Maine's next Governor should be a leader with this skill set to address the state's growing financial crisis.

Not surprisingly, it's this sense of fiscal responsibility that's an overarching theme of Bruce's campaign.

He's not an entrenched Augusta bureaucrat, and in my opinion this makes him an attractive option; a candidate eager to do the right thing who is not beholden to special interest groups or a slave to anyone else's ideologies.

One of Bruce's primary goals is to stem the tide of talented young people fleeing the state for better opportunities elsewhere, and he plans to do this by stimulating Maine businesses and creating a more hospitable economic climate to help nurture those businesses and individuals alike.

To this end, Bruce's resume is impressive. He attended Andover and Harvard on academic scholarships, then started a financial services company that eventually managed $5 billion in assets, including pension funds for major Corporations like Bath Iron Works, amongst others.

Over the past few years he's turned his attention to real estate development and philanthropy, touching the lives of countless people with his contagious enthusiasm and business acumen.

Over the last decade or so, Bruce has also contributed mightily to NYA, both in terms of personal largesse and his time.

Bruce recently stepped down from a nine-year stint on the Board of Directors at NYA, 4 of which he served as the Board's President.

During his tenure, Bruce oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at NYA, leading a record-breaking capital campaign that raised more money for the school than at any time in its 200 year history.

Thanks in great part to Bruce's tireless efforts, those funds enabled NYA to build its new middle school and a state-of-the-art science center.

At the same time, Bruce also spearheaded the effort to artificially surface one of the two athletic fields on campus, creating a facility that allows our student athletes to practice and play games without the muddiness that has plagued so many fall and spring contests in years past.

In addition to his "behind the scenes" enrichment of campus life at NYA , Bruce has also made many direct contributions to student's lives, coaching baseball at the Academy for 8 years and leading his teams to an impressive 4 State Championships during that time.

But of all Bruce's accomplishments, perhaps his greatest is raising his son Sam as a single father. Currently a senior at Phillips Academy, Andover, Sam attended NYA from 6th through 10th grade, making many friends and enjoying the academic and athletic challenges our school has to offer.

In conclusion, I hope you'll join me in supporting Bruce's campaign for Governor of Maine.

We can all help in many ways, including, but not limited to, spreading the word, contributing some of your hard earned dollars, volunteering to host an event, or simply by following him on Twitter or "friending" him on Facebook.

Regardless, if you don't know him I hope you'll take the time to familiarize yourself with Bruce by going to his website, BruceForMe.com and checking it out. You can also follow him on Twitter: @BruceForMe.

You'll be seeing a lot more of Bruce in the coming months, and I hope you'll share my enthusiasm and commitment about his bid to become the next Governor of our great state; a state that needs a man like Bruce more than ever.

Thanks so much for your time.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Reed Hunter