What a Difference an S Makes

An intern noticed a missing letter, and that's when the website shuffle began

A missing letter spelled opportunity for Beth Krom's campaign staff.

Since November, a link on Rep. John Campbell's website had been redirecting visitors to his opponent's site.

Instead of CampbellforCongress, a link titled "Join the Resistance" went to CampbellforCongres.com -- note the second 's' missing in 'Congress.' Surprised visitors found a picture of rival Beth Krom with red text, "BETH KROM for Congress."

And the link has pointed to the enemy's site for two months. An intern for the Krom campaign noticed the typo in the link in November. Krom's supporters bought the misspelled domain name and redirected it Krom's website.

Krom's campaign clearly relished in the prank. Campaign manager Melahat Rafiei said she clicked the link daily.

"It's been directing to our website since Nov. 16," Rafiei said. "It was hilarious to us. Every day I'd get up in the morning and check  it and see, 'Oh, it's still there.' It was funny to see how long it would take  for them to catch on."

The OC Register noticed the redirect on their politics blog. Campbell spokesman Chris Palmer said the staff wasn't aware of the  mistake until they saw the Register's blog post.

"This isn't really a story, but the problem's been fixed and that's that," Campbell spokesman Brent Hall said. "There's really nothing more to it  than that."
 

Copyright CNS - City News Service
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