Presidential campaign committees for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are buying up thousands of dollars’ worth of website domain names, with some of the purchases cloaked in mystery. On Sept. 2, the day that the addresses for stickittorick.com, rickperrynot.com and buryperry.com were bought, Romney’s campaign spent more than $2,800 buying domain names from GoDaddy.com,
The Washington Post reported.
However, the Romney campaign denies they bought those names and whoever did buy the names hid their identity by using Domains by Proxy. The Romney campaign would not reveal the domains it bought Sept. 2, the Post reported.
A Washington Post analysis also showed that Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee spent $8,065 at GoDaddy, with Romney’s campaign dropping $12,097 on domains. By comparison, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., who has since dropped out of the race, spent under a $1,000 combined on domains, the Post reported.
While the Perry campaign has said it has not bought many domains, others are buying Perry-related domains. Some of the names could have been bought by those who buy names with the hope of selling them later at a profit. Nonetheless, On August 15, just two days after Perry entered the race for the presidency, the Obama campaign dropped nearly $4,000 on domain names. That same day about 70 Perry related names were bought, the Post reported.
The Obama campaign said it did not buy any of the 70 names. However, the campaign owns more than 350 domains and while most promote the president three, including mittquiz.com, are directed at potential opponents, the Post reported.
The Romney campaign maintains obamaisntworking.com that promotes the theme that “Obama Isn’t Working,” the Post reported.