Student's Facebook heats up dad's campaign

Pictures of a 19-year-old sophomore enjoying an alcoholic beverage have caused her father's congressional campaign to heat up just days after he announced his candidacy.\nPhotos posted on Facebook and Webshots of sophomore Andrea Ellsworth, daughter of Democratic challenger for Indiana's 8th Congressional District, Brad Ellsworth, surfaced on former IU law student Joshua Claybourn's political blog, followed by comments pointing out the student's underage drinking. Those photos were then picked up by the Evansville media.\nThe pictures have since been removed from Facebook and Webshots.\n"She deserves her privacy," reads a statement from Ellsworth's campaign manager Jay Howser. "Brad will deal with this privately, as a family matter. And like President Bush, who also had to deal with issues like this with his own college-age daughters, Brad realizes no one is perfect."\nClaybourn said he does not know who posted the comments on his blog, but said the comments came from an IP address that originated off-campus in Bloomington.\n"I did not seek out or find the pictures," Claybourn said. "The very public pictures were left as a very public comment by someone else."\nClaybourn is a registered Republican and said he worked on a campaign for incumbent 8th District Congressman John Hostettler six years ago, but has no \nconnection to him now.\nThe Evansville Courier & Press wrote a story about the photos after Claybourn submitted his original blog post to them and noted "interesting comments" followed the post on his blog.\n"As an irregular contributor to the opinion pages, I frequently share columns, information and pieces with the newspaper's staff," he said.\nStill, Claybourn said too much has been made of something so common as underage drinking.\n"No election, particularly not one of the few competitive House races in the entire United States, should be decided by such a story," he said.\nIncriminating Facebook pictures, particularly those involving underage drinking, have been used by several universities as evidence to punish students, but this might be the first time they have become an issue in a political race.\nThe University of North Carolina previously charged 15 students with underage drinking because of their Facebook profiles, and in November 2005, four students from Northern Kentucky University were fined for party pictures they posted on the site, according to campus newspapers.\nDean of Students Dick McKaig said Facebook is becoming a bigger issue at meetings he has attended involving representatives from other campuses, but said IU is not looking to punish students for what they post online.\n"Facebook-related issues" have been involved in a handful of judicial cases and discussed at several others, he said.\n"Realistically if you go to a movie and see someone in the movie killed, you don't believe that person was actually killed," McKaig said. "Pictures on an Internet site are not something actionable. They raise questions, but a picture doesn't really prove anything."\nAndrea Ellsworth did not return phone calls by press time.