Unfortunately political messages have an exception in the laws involved here.

Also, my understanding is that this isn’t even a case of the politicians making an exception for themselves but for this being protected speech, so there are legal issues with blocking it without the kind of majorities American congress is not capable of anymore.

I don't see how there could be an argument for protected speech here. The constitution protects your ability to petition the government, not the government's ability to petition you.

A candidate is not acting as a representative of the government. In fact, the Hatch Act generally makes it illegal to mix the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act

If someone is campaigning to be in government, I guess they don't technically fall under the "government" category yet...

And neither do you. The constitution doesn’t protect your right to harass other citizens.

And if they were running for reelection?

I don’t know if the claim is true, but if it is, it’s likely an intentional loophole because the people writing the laws would want to exempt themselves.

Yes this is what happened. There are specific carve outs for various uses that don’t fall under the legal definition of “spam.” Of course political advertising is one of them.

Just like for the longest time it wasn’t insider trading if you were a politician.

Which is why i just report (to Verizon) every piece of shit political spam text as junk as I delete it.

The “do not call” registry had a purpose, and it’d have been so easy to add an additional “and also no political anything” to it. Let them burn.