Search for gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski on Google, and high on the list of hits will be his campaign’s official website at bobforgovernor.com.
But higher than that link may be an ad for bobstefanowski.co, a website registered two weeks ago that has nothing nice to say about the Republican candidate — and appears courtesy of Stefanowski’s Democratic rival, Ned Lamont.
“The Stefanowski Plan: Radical. Wrong,” the website declares, above a lengthy list of catastrophes the Lamont campaign says would befall the state if Stefanowski were to follow through on his pledge to eliminate the state income tax. At the bottom, below 26 footnotes, is the message: “Paid for by Ned for CT. Richard Smith Treasurer. Approved by Ned Lamont and Susan Bysiewicz.”
Lamont, meanwhile, can likewise find his name in the web address of an unflattering site controlled by others — and prominently featured in Google searches. Click on www.nedlamont.fyi, registered last month and run by a Republican political action committee, and you’ll see Lamont described as a “top enabler for failed Governor Dan Malloy,” with information under the categories “Enabler,” “Tax-And-Spend” and “Families Pay More.” The website is the work of Change PAC, which is financed by the Republican Governors Association, but is required by law to operate independently of the Stefanowski campaign.
While both websites identify their sponsors, that is not evident from the Google ads. That has led to criticism at a time of heightened concern over online political manipulation and the role of large Internet companies.
The Lamont campaign has no apologies for the possibility that Internet surfers seeking Stefanowski’s website might click on the ad for their site instead, saying voters need to know about the potential impact of Stefanowski’s policies.
“Bob Stefanowski’s scheme to eliminate half of Connecticut’s revenue would make our current budget crisis worse, hurt education, and raise property taxes on middle class families — all while giving a huge break to the wealthiest,” said Lamont campaign spokeswoman Lacey Rose. “Voters need to know the clear contrast here.”
That, naturally, brought push-back from Stefanowski. “It’s not surprising that Ned Lamont is trying to mislead voters on my policies, considering his plans to raise the income tax, expand the property tax, and put up tolls across the state are so unpopular with voters,” Stefanowski said in a statement released by the campaign. “Connecticut won’t be fooled by his attempts to distract attention from his plans to continue Malloy’s failed policies by misrepresenting mine.”
The website bobstefanowski.com — with the more-common dot c-o-m domain — was registered a year ago, but is not active. The site nedlamont.com is Lamont’s official campaign website, and was first registered more than a dozen years ago. But beyond dot-com websites, there are hundreds of other available domain extensions, making it easy for one candidate or political group to set up a website challenging a rival, even with a web address that includes the rival’s name.
“It’s a common strategy,” said Tim Groeling, a UCLA professor who focuses on political communication and new media. So savvy campaigns, he said, try to get ahead of the competition.
“Preemptively purchasing all of the potentially ‘dangerous’ domains associated with your candidate is becoming a basic mark of a competent campaign staff,” he said. And when a website is snatched by the opposition, Groeling is primarily concerned with whether the site hides its backers.
“In this case, it seems to be legit and common. We might have a different conversation if Google was sending the regular (versus paid) search results preferentially to the attack site, or if the site lacked the sponsorship disclosure,” he said. “But in this case, it seems to be the new normal in campaigns.”
It has become particularly common at the national level for candidates to register and “park” websites with variations of their name, to prevent their political rivals from scooping them up. As the Associated Press reported two years, the owner of such website addresses as donaldtrumpsucks.com and trumpmustgo.com is none other than Donald Trump.
A study two years ago by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse found that more than a quarter of .com domains containing presidential-candidate names were owned by third parties — either entrepreneurs hoping to sell them, or rivals with more mischievous intent.
At the time, for example, the website tedcruz.com featured a photograph of Hillary Clinton and the message “FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!” Today it shows a billboard with a single word: “IMPEACH.” The website clintonkaine.com — combining Clinton’s name with that of her running mate Tim Kaine — was registered by the Trump campaign and today features a “Clinton-Scandal Primer” with dozens of links.
The practice of cybersquatting political domains is far older than the 2016 election season. Fifteen years ago, a liberal PAC called American Bridge 21st Century bought the rights to newtgingrich.com and still uses the web page to needle the former House speaker and Trump campaign supporter.
While campaigns are now on notice about the scramble for website names, the proliferation of domain extensions — .biz, .info, .name, .xyz — makes it difficult for any candidate to grab every possible website.
But while turnabout is often considered fair play in politics, it appears that neither the Stefanowski campaign, nor anyone else, has yet to try to register nedlamont.co.
