Arizona attorney general candidate Andrew Gould, a Republican and former Arizona Supreme Court justice, said he has been suspended from Mailchimp for violating its terms of service. He believes it may have been due to a press release he issued on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a New York gun control law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Gould stated in a message to his supporters, “After a year of using this service, they have suspended our account without the opportunity to appeal it. Mailchimp claims that we have violated their Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. They will not specify the violation. I find it highly suspicious that, immediately after the release of my statement supporting the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the 2nd Amendment in New York, Mailchimp shut down my account.”
Gould noted that Mailchimp’s policy prohibits “campaigns promoting or supporting terrorism or violent extremism.” Mailchimp is a popular mass emailing program that is often used by political campaigns.
Gould’s June 23 press release about the gun decision was short, stating, “Today, the Supreme Court protected the rights of law-abiding citizens to lawfully exercise their Second Amendment rights. The New York law provided government officials with virtually unlimited authority to pick and choose who obtained a concealed carry permit. We would never subject any other constitutional right to such an arbitrary and oppressive law. It bears repeating that the Second Amendment is an express right, clearly guaranteed by the Constitution, and that no government official has the authority to relegate it to a second-class right.”
Many of Gould’s previous press releases focused on the problems at the border. A press release that came out the same day commended Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for suing Scottsdale Unified School District on behalf of parents.
This isn’t the first time Mailchimp cut off service due to emails defending the Second Amendment. In January 2021, Mailchimp suspended the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) from its platform without any warning or explanation. Philip Van Cleave, the VCDL’s president, said the timing was suspect, right before the group organized its annual rally against gun control measures at Virginia’s state capital.
Mailchimp is acquiring a lengthy record of censoring voices on the right. The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site that publishes fake humorous stories similar to The Onion, was suspended in June 2021 by Mailchimp, but they reconsidered and released the suspension. Mailchimp told the satire site that an “automated system” flagged the account over alleged “harmful information.” The Babylon Bee decided it had “no interest in staying on a platform that’s looking for excuses to censor us by literally scanning the content of our emails” and left.
Sidney Powell, one of former President Trump’s election attorneys known for her work investigating election fraud, was de-platformed by Mailchimp in July 2021.
Mailchimp suspended the account of the Northern Virginia Tea Party immediately after the November 2020 election, informing them that a mailer notifying its members about a recount rally violated its terms of agreement about “potential… misinformation.”
Engage the Right, a conservative political organization in South Carolina, was also suspended by Mailchimp about that time due to a mailer they sent out regarding an event they held regarding the flaws in the election.
ReOpenCalNow was kicked off Mailchimp in January 2021 for what the group believes was sending out information about alternative therapies for COVID-19. Mailchimp told them it was due to emailing people who had not affirmatively opted in, but ReOpenCalNow believes this was a ruse since only four people out of over 3,000 recipients marked the emails as spam, and only one recipient logged a complaint directly with MailChimp.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was banned from Mailchimp after the 2020 election “for violations of our Terms” after he criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The American Spectator observed that Mailchimp modified its terms of service around the November 2020 election to kick off anyone they don’t agree with. The new language states, “Mailchimp does not allow the distribution of Content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances.”
Gould ended his update denouncing the suspension.
“If my suspicions are correct, the ‘woke’ big-tech is, once again, violating our First Amendment right to speak freely,” he stated. “The extreme silencing our country has faced from the ‘woke’ agenda is why I walked away from the Arizona Supreme Court. We have got to fight back. This has got to stop.” Gould is facing five opponents in the Republican primary race.
The Arizona Sun Times asked Gould and Intuit, the parent company of Mailchimp, for comment, but did not receive a response by the deadline for this article.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Andrew Gould” by Andrew Gould. Background Photo “Mail Chimp” by Bernard Goldbach. CC BY 2.0.
