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William Shatner takes on Garland political candidate

A Garland political candidate has found herself in a dustup with legendary actor William Shatner.

GARLAND, Texas -- A Garland political candidate has found herself in a dustup with legendary actor William Shatner.

Brandy Chambers is an attorney and self-described nerd who is a Democratic candidate for Texas House District 112 in Garland. Last week, she sent an email to supporters that she was intended to show her personality.

"I actually said, 'If it bothers you that your leader geeks out when she meets Captain Kirk, then maybe I'm not the leader for you,'" Chambers recalled. "And there was my picture with me and Captain Kirk."

The email included a photograph of Chambers with William Shatner. It was signed by the Star Trek star. Chambers said the picture was taken years ago at a Dallas fan convention. She said she paid for the photo and the autograph, and her interaction lasted just a few seconds.

"You stand in line forever to get in there, and then literally you're with him one second," she said. "I wouldn't qualify that as having actually met him."

Chambers said at the time, she had no plan to run for office, but she said the only restriction that she agreed to with the photograph was that she could not resell it.

After her email went out, someone sent it to Shatner who is famously apolitical. The 86-year-old actor has a massive Twitter following, and he did not set his phasers to stun. He wrote to Chambers on Twitter, "Using a convention picture in a political ad is not allowed! That implies endorsement which never will happen."

Chambers said when she got the message, she felt gut punched.

"Oh my God, Captain Kirk's mad at me? What!?" she recalled feeling. "It was not my intent to say he endorsed me."

Chambers does not believe she did anything wrong, but she tweeted an apology to him. She says Shatner fans attacked her and she got frustrated, escalating a Twitter war by writing to him, "Sorry you don't stand for women's rights and education." She later took the tweet down, but he responded by tweeting the Texas Attorney General asking whether her use of his image constituted an ethics violation.

"I apologized for that. I was very upset after receiving a few hundred hateful replies and emails," Chambers said.

Shatner emailed WFAA today, saying, "It was unfortunate she tried to shame me instead of just complying with my wishes that she not include my image in her political advertisements. I just fired back with the same vitriol she showed. I am happy to learn she has deleted my image from her website, and it appears that the matter is at an end."

Chambers says she will still keep the photograph up on her wall at home. But politics makes for strange bedfellows and even stranger battles.

"I never thought I'd get into a Twitter battle with William Shatner," she said.

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