JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The mass e-mail from the boss was simple enough: an update on the prospect of employee pay raises and health plan improvements in the annual budget.

But this was no typical company.

In this case, the e-mailing boss was none other than Gov. Bob Holden, a chief executive who also is running for re-election this year. And the recipients were most of Missouri's 61,000 employees, a potentially large voting bloc.

The governor's office said Monday that the e-mails were simply a way to keep employees informed -- with no political motives.

Not everyone is so sure.

"Whether you were running for re-election or not, it would have been the sensible and appropriate thing to do to keep people apprised of how things were developing," said Robert Salisbury, a professor in political science at Washington University in St. Louis. But "that is not to say it isn't political, because everything is."

Holden faces a stiff re-election challenge this year both from Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill and Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt.

In that light, e-mails to state employees are a cheap way to spread some positive news about the governor, Salisbury said.

Holden has not typically sent mass e-mails to state employees.

But he did so when outlining his State of the State address in January, e-mailing employees about his proposals for a basic 2 percent pay raise and a higher state contribution to employees' family health insurance premiums.

In April, Holden sent three follow-up messages -- updating employees on the pay raise prospects with each step of the Legislature's budget process.

In each e-mail, he urged state employees to make their views known to lawmakers. "I will continue to fight for you and the wages and benefits you earn through your hard work," he pledged in one of the messages.

At the advice of Holden's legal counsel, the e-mails were tailored to be informational, not to try to influence employees' positions on issues, said Holden spokeswoman Mary Still.

"To every so often get a message from the governor, I think, helps employees understand that the governor is concerned and is pushing for issues that are important to them," Still said.

Yet that's precisely what gives the letter some political overtones, said Senate Appropriations Committee chairman John Russell, R-Lebanon.

"If there wasn't a primary race, I probably wouldn't think too much about it," Russell said. "But since there is, he obviously wants to find favor with state employees."

McCaskill campaign spokesman Glenn Campbell also questioned Holden's purpose in repeatedly sending e-mails to employees.

"To have four of them come so quickly with an election coming so close, it does make one question as to what the motivation would be," Campbell said. "If it is for political gain, I think that kind of move would backfire."

Two years ago, Holden's then-spokesman Jerry Nachtigal, accused Republican Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder of "a ploy to incite state employees" after Kinder sent a mass e-mail to 21,000 employees criticizing Holden's executive order expanding collective bargaining powers for unions.

In the current debate, the governor's office is not the only entity inundating employees with news about the pay raise.

The St. Louis-based chapter of the Service Employees International Union mailed 45,000 letters to state employees last week, made 35,000 phone calls to employees' homes and distributed 3,000 leaflets in Jefferson City -- all urging government employees to tell lawmakers to support a pay raise.

"We're running a full-scale campaign" at a cost of more than $20,000, said union president Grant Williams.

The proposed budget as passed by the Senate last week includes a $1,200 annual pay raise for nearly all state employees, plus an increase in state health plan payments on behalf of employees' families. But that budget still must be reconciled with the House plan, which included a 2 percent raise but no increase in health benefits.