Delegate Johnny S. “No Email” Joannou

Delegate Johnny S. Joannou (D-79th) holds the distinction as the ONLY member of the General Assembly NOT to have an email address. As the peoples' representative, this is really not a good thing to be known for. While he began serving in the House of Delegates (1976) long before Al Gore even invented the internet, he remains somewhere in the Neanderthal period of technology. Apparently, he could not altogether avoid the internet, because the General Assembly has giving him a webpage.

While we were unable to turn up any really juicy information, like if he served on an Information/Technology Committee, we have discovered some interesting facts about Johnny “No Email” Joannou. For someone without an email address he has spent an awful lot of money on computers over the years. According to VPAP, since 2001 he has spent $4,500 on computers and an additional $2,000 on computer repair. Last year he spent over $600 on computer repair. This is a fairly high number. When compared with Senator Deeds, who is a friend of the Blogosphere and a relatively tech savvy guy, this is astronomical. In the same category, “Computer Hardware/Software” in the same time frame, Deeds spent less than $100 on computers. When Bill Bolling (also a friend of Blogosphere) was in the Senate, over a similar number of years he barely spent over $1,000 in the same category.

In case you were wondering, Delegate No Email does have internet access. He has paid approximately $1,200 for internet service since 2001.

It is not very surprising that Delegate Joannou has taken quite a few contributions from telephone companies, totally about $10,000 since 1997. But what is bizarre are the contributions he has received from the technology industry. Last year the Hampton Roads Technology Council gave Mr. No Email a $350 donation. Even more extraordinarily, AOL, the mammoth email and internet service provider, gave Delegate No Email a $500 donation last year as well. Since 1997 Joannou raked in over $16,500 in campaign contributions from the Technology/Communication Industry, all to a man who for whatever reason refuses to have an email address.

Normally, we would email Delegate Joannou to get his perspective, but of course we can’t do that.

Raising Kaine broke the email mystery story almost one year ago.

Developing . . .

Update: Sources from inside the technology office of the General Assembly have confirmed that “He desired to not have an email address.”