According to Professor GOP, the legislator's office called it a "vandalized campaign sign"

An associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said he received a threatening phone call from the representative's office. Jeff FortenberryJeffrey (Jeff) Lane Fortenberry In the wake of ISIS: Seeking to restore what is right and good for the Yazidis Fortenberry appointed chair of House The Hill's Subcommittee on Legislative Appropriations Morning Report – sponsored by PhRMA – Tensions are increasing for chamber republicans PLUS (R-Neb.) After having "liked" a message on Facebook describing one of the MP's campaign billboards altered by his critics.

According to Ari Kohen, Associate Professor of Political Science, Dr. William Archer III, the Congressman's chief of staff, telephoned his office and sent an e-mail to the director of the school's political science department decrying the Kohen's supposed support for vandalism, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.

The message in question apparently would have shown Fortenberry's name partly covered with a piece of duct tape to appear as a crude joke involving flatulence.

Kohen told Star Journal that he originally thought the message was simply a Photoshopped image when he had pressed the "I love" button on his phone.

"I know it's not a big comedy," he told the newspaper. "It was Sunday, I was bored and I burst out laughing. I clicked like because I found it amusing.

Fortenberry's chief of staff, he said, threatened to publicly spread that Kohen approved of "vandalism" and seemed to suggest that Kohen's career would be threatened. Archer also sent an email to Kohen's superiors of the university's political science department as well as to the chancellor of UNL.

"The question is, what is the position of the department and the university regarding the vandalism or the worst violence that we have seen in this political season," Archer wrote in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper.

"It was not clear at all what he wanted from me, whether he wanted it to be different from this one or retracting it," Kohen told Fortenberry's Star Journal assistant. "He told me that they could publicly announce that I liked vandalism and that it would be bad for me."

Kohen says that he took the call as a threat and informed the House Ethics Committee of the incident.

"So that people in this position are ready and willing to abuse their authority in this way, to intimidate and push them from hand to hand, and threaten to revoke the punishment for something that may hurt the feelings of someone else." "One," Kohen told Star News. you're all poorer if that's what's happening in this country. "

A request for comment from The Hill addressed to Archer was not immediately postponed Thursday night. The Fortenberry District is reputedly Republican safely by the FiveThirtyEight electoral analysis blog ahead of next week's elections, a district poll showing Fortenberry with a double-digit lead over its Democratic challenger.