Bend City Council member Nathan Boddie listens during a work session prior to the Bend City Council meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018, at Bend City Hall. (Joe Kline/Bulletin photo)

Whatever else can be said about Bend city Councilor and Democratic legislative candidate Nathan Boddie, and plenty can be, he seems to have a knack for drawing out his critics’ worst impulses. The latest example involves his decision to block selected comments on his Facebook page.

Boddie, who’d like to represent Bend’s District 54 in the Legislature, sailed through this spring’s primary without any Democratic opposition and appeared to be in a good position to win election in November. His party enjoys a significant voter-registration advantage in the district, after all.

But then, in June, House Democrats pulled their support for Boddie for supposedly serious episodes of misconduct they refused to describe specifically against people they declined to identify. Thus, even as they disparaged Boddie, party leaders made it impossible for voters to judge the seriousness of his supposed offenses. Boddie may or may not have been guilty of bad behavior, but Democratic House leaders certainly were.

Not that anyone should weep for Boddie, who compounded his problems by responding inappropriately to a subsequent allegation that he’d groped a Bend woman at a bar years earlier. Rather than simply denying the claim, Boddie alleged that his accuser suffered from substance abuse problems.

Following the well-deserved outpouring of outrage at his insensitive response, Boddie went silent, refusing even to answer questions from reporters. The silent treatment persisted for a dozen weeks.

Then, on Wednesday, Boddie broke his silence on his Facebook page. He announced that he hadn’t given up his race for the Legislature, decried “gutter politics and salacious stories from concocted sources” that “are only good for selling newspapers” and proclaimed — despite abundant evidence to the contrary — that he possesses “thick skin for these kinds of tactics.”

Boddie also allegedly blocked a number of Facebook users who criticized his post, possibly violating a questionable City Council policy governing social media use. City Councilor Barb Campbell, a former supporter, said she’d raise this potential violation of city policy at the next council meeting. Here’s hoping she and her colleagues find something more productive to occupy their time.

The city policy is very possibly an overreach, at least in so far as it prohibits city councilors from blocking people on private Facebook pages that are used sometimes “to disseminate information or provide for engagement with constituents.” In support of its policy, the city points to a 2017 decision by a federal judge in Virginia in a similar case. However, the fact that a judge on the other side of the country thinks it’s OK for the government to assert control over the private Facebook pages of elected officials doesn’t mean the city’s policy would hold up to legal scrutiny in Oregon. The Virginia decision has no bearing here.

Fortunately, the only sanction available for councilors who violate the policy is a glorified finger wag by colleagues, which in Boddie’s case would be a wasted gesture. Recognizing this is where common sense should come into play. Boddie, whose term expires at the end of this year, isn’t running for re-election to council and, in fact, is barely mailing it in as it is. We’d be surprised if he cared at all about receiving an official no-no from his colleagues. What, then, would be the point?

It shouldn’t need to be said, meanwhile, that the council’s social-media policy is intended to apply to the conduct of city business on councilors’ private Facebook pages. Boddie may be a councilor still, but he wrote Wednesday’s post in support of his campaign for the state Legislature. Meanwhile, a follow-up post on Thursday focuses on the state’s role in a contentious local issue, septic-system conversion. Again, he’s using his page to run for the Legislature, not to conduct city business. Boddie hasn’t conducted city business on his Facebook page since June 21, when he posted his opposition to a set of city fee hikes.

Let’s hope Campbell and her colleagues find a more productive use of their time at the next council meeting than carping about a soon-to-be-gone councilor’s use of his private Facebook page to support a crippled race for the Legislature.

In the meantime, they should consider the value of a social media policy that not only constrains the speech of elected officials but encourages unproductive nitpicking by colleagues who ought to have better things to do.