Two 2012 Presidential Campaigns Spend More than $20,000 on Domain Names

According to an article on BendBulletin.com, four political campaigns have spent just over $21,000 on domain registrations for the 2012 presidential race.  The bulletin article studied the finance reports of the Obama, Romney, Pawlenty, Perry and Paul campaigns.  Here’s how it broke down:

Romney  $12,097

Obama $8,065

Pawlenty $668

Paul $208

Perry $0

The article references GoDaddy.com every time it mentions a where a candidate registers domain names.  I don’t know if all of these candidates names are maintained by GoDaddy but the authors of the article probably don’t even know what the word ‘registrar’ means.  It’s kind of like when someone is in a supermarket looking for tissue paper they ask the store employees “Where’s the Kleenex?”.

According to the Bend Bulletin article researchers, the Romney campaign spent an additional $398 on two DomainTools.com subscriptions.  Nice plug for DomainTools there.

Parts of the Bulletin article try to connect some of the registrations by one campaign to domains that include names of other politicians by comparing registration dates and reported transaction histories.  Of course, the majority of these domains are registered under privacy as pointed out by the authors.  Among names mentioned that were recently registered:  stickittorick.com, buryperry.com, therealrickperry.net, christiansagainsperry.com, americansagainstperry.com, christians4perry.com.  Hmm, since the Perry campaign isn’t buying up Perry related names and Romney denies it, who is?  Who cares?

When asked why the Rick Perry campaign is not buying domain names for their candidate the Perry campaign spokesman said:

“The public is more interested in how the candidates can create jobs and improve the economy, not how many domain names you can rack up.  We’re not running for student body council here. This is for president of the United States.”