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A software consultant running for the Green party in Port Moody-Coquitlam said he was inaccurately branded as a “paper candidate” after he mistakenly posted on Facebook what was meant to be a private message to a friend.

Don Barthel later deleted the post, but not before political rivals had made it go viral.

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“I’m not expected to actively campaign,” he had written. “I’m really just there so that the B.C. Greens have someone on the ballot.

“That remark was kind of a self-deprecating remark by myself, referring to myself as a paper candidate,” said Barthel, a 50-year-old married father of three teens who lives in Vancouver. “I was responding to a friend who was all emphatic about my candidacy and asking to help.”

Barthel said he clicked on an emailed Facebook notification to reply to his friend’s message, not realizing his response would be posted on Facebook. He laughed when the irony was pointed out to him, of a software developer not being clear on how Facebook worked: “Therein lies the lesson. I didn’t read the fine print that said respond to this email to post your remarks.”