John Bradford: Kansas State Lawmaker Who Wrote Rude Email Now Regrets Sending It

John Bradford wishes he could take back the email that went viral and turned the Kansas state lawmaker into the internet’s Public Enemy No. 1 this week.

Bradford sent a flippant response to a constituent who had emailed about a bill that opponents say would effectively ban Uber taxi services in the state. The woman who sent the email later explained that her husband is blind and relies on the app to help get around, but Bradford apparently didn’t want to hear her arguments.

The Republican lawmaker sent a terse and seemingly rude response to her letter.

“I received your email. I don’t need it, so I am sending it back to you.”

Now, John Bradford is saying he’s sorry for the reply but is offering a bit of an explanation. The email the woman had sent was part of a massive campaign from Uber to swing the vote in their favor, Bradford claimed. The emails were flooding the state capital and had “locked up computers all around, laptops, iPads, phones,” Bradford told Fox 4.

“Some people couldn’t even get their phones to operate, they had so many emails,” he said.

Bradford said he reads every email he gets from constituents, but the ones from Uber were not exactly genuine.

“It wasn’t being flippant,” Bradford explained. “A lot of people were irritated, to say the least.”

“I’ve never blown off a constituent yet,” Bradford added. “When you’ve got hundreds of them by the same subject line, no I do not read those.

The bill meant quite a bit more to the woman who sent the email. In a post on the local Kansas City page on Reddit, the woman (who went by Thad-Jarvis) explained that the regulations would crush Uber, which is very important to her husband.

Thad-Jarvis shared with Reddit her worries about the bill.

“My interpretation of the proposed amendment is that it would become too costly for someone to be an Uber driver due to stricter regulations on insurance as well as requiring a business and chauffeur’s license. The whole concept of Uber is to allow everyday people to become part of ride-sharing. My husband calls this “financial intimidation”, but I’m not sure if there’s a technical term for it.”

But Bradford did say he wishes he would have responded a bit differently, saying, “In hindsight I wouldn’t probably have said, ‘I don’t need it.’ I would probably have said, ‘Thank you, glad to have received your email. Thank you very much.'”

[Image via JohnBradfordKS.com]