BATON ROUGE - Jeff Landry's campaign says spotty phone service caused a message from the Louisiana attorney general to go out to numerous recipients in the dead of night.

A spokesperson for Landry's re-election campaign says the message from its peer-to-peer texting program was actually sent out between 1 and 7 p.m. Wednesday. However, the campaign says about 15 percent of those texts got "caught up" because of a problem with the phone network and "broke free" for many sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. 

Many complained that they were awoken by the unsolicited text.

The text message read as follows.

This is your Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. You may have been texted by an out-of-state liberal special interest group for my opponent. In 2019 I created a law protecting health insurance for pre-existing conditions in LA. I'm also leading efforts to stop crime. More @ JeffLandry.com Thank you! - AG Jeff Landry

The text appeared to come from a toll-free number.

The campaign plans to send out another text Thursday apologizing to those affected by the delayed messages.