Responding to occasional speculation that Steve Palgiuca is “running” for Senate mainly as a run for Governor, I decided to sniff around. Turns out that pagliuca2010.com was registered through the same company, on the same day, as pagliucaforsenate.com, the “official” address for the senatorial campaign. (details)
The same individual who claimed those two domains also bought up pagliucaforsenate.net, pagliucaforsenate.org But pagliuca2010.net and pagliuca2010.org are still available. Let’s run through the scenarios, shall we?
- Pagliuca2010.com was to be the website for a re-election campaign, in case Pagliuca won. My first theory, but doesn’t hold up — the winner of the special election isn’t up again until 2012. Pagliuca2012.com is still available.
- Pagliuca2010.com was an alternate to the website name he eventually chose. Indeed, pagliuca2010.com currently re-directs to pagliucaforsenate.com Remember, in all his ads, the campaign uses the website address “pagliucaforsenate.com” Perhaps the belief is that the second address is easier to remember, I’m not really sure. But it’s odd that only 2 of his 4 addresses leads to his campaign site…why is that pagliucaforsenate.net doesn’t re-direct anywhere?
- Pagliuca2010.com was purchased to grab casual voters who can’t bother to Google for his site, but simply type “pagliuca2010.com” in the address bar. The hope may have been that people will simply type in the address, and the campaign wanted to make sure surfers ended up in the right place. In my opinion, this gives a lot of credit to casual voters by presuming they’d spell his name right on the first try.
- Pagliuca2010.com was claimed to deter cybersquatters the same way that pagliucaforsenate.net was claimed. A quite plausible theory…but one that may credit the campaign too much. If the campaign is smart enough to deal with cybersquatters by claiming those addresses, why not take care of pagliuca2010.net and pagliuca2010.org at the same time? Perhaps it was just covering likely alternates, and with no intention to publicize 2010.com, there was no need to cover the alternates. On the other hand, when has Pagliuca been reluctant to spend money on his campaign?
- Pagliuca is reserving pagliuca2010.com for his gubernatorial campaign. After the primary, the site is re-branded for a governor-friendly campaign. If so, why did he let pagliuca2010.net and pagliuca2010.org slip through? Was this an oversight on the part of the campaign, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
I certainly don’t have all the answers. I’m not even sure the Pagliuca campaign does either — this may be a case of keeping the bases open…but I’d be curious to hear an explanation.
(PS: Coakley2010.com, Capuano2010.com, and Khazei2010.com are all still available…)
Discuss
13 Comments . Leave a comment below.the general election for Senate does occur in 2010, if just barely...
...but do you think Steve is going to re-orient all his campaign literature, signage, etc. after the primary from "pagliucaforsenate.com" to "pagliuca2010.com"? Otherwise, what's the point?
And you buy as many as you can if only to prevent a third party from putting up content you can't control.
...Sabutai's point.
I got the point. I think Sabutai is thinking too hard about this. Domain names are cheap. Buying one is not necessarily evidence of some grand plan.
But if domain names are cheap, why not go all out? Presuming that people will unpromptedly type pagliuca2010.com is fine, but it's a short and cheap leap to cover oneself by buying pagliuca2010.net
I'm quite open to the idea that he bought (and didn't use) other domain names for such purposes; I'm also open to the idea that other purposes are being kept in mind as well.
and exploit the name recognition later for another purpose.
The primary is of course in 2009 and since they are campaigning now I think of this as a 2009 race with 2010 refering to next fall.
and you don't have a pagluica2010 for senate in January 2010 plus why would you remap you website between a primary in Dec and election on Jan 29? You wouldn't. Clearly, the pagluica2010 is for another race next fall.
If that were the case, they would have grabbed Pagliuca2009.com also, and they didn't.
Staffer is told to get website set up. Registers PagliucaforSenate.com and Pagliuca2010.com.
Staffer: we've found and reserved two available options for the website, PagliucaforSenate.com and Pagliuca2010.com, which do you think we should use?
Decision-maker: let's use the first one. It's a special election, short campaign; it's good to remind people what office he's running for.
Someone gets Pagliuca2010.com. A few people look at it. No, they say. We might not make it to 2010. How about Pagliucaforsenate.com?
They were purchased on the same day, at almost the same time.
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