Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James R. Conner.

 

29 August 2013

John Lewis’ skeleton website may reveal more than he intended

Democratic U.S. House candidate John Lewis does have a campaign website — montanansforlewis.com. His campaign registered the domain name with GoDaddy through a proxy on 12 August.

At present, the website’s just one page, with three elements: his campaign logo, a link for accepting contributions, and “paid for by” information. There was no contact us link as of early this morning.

lewis_home_page

Hidden in the HTML source code, however, in a META tag providing information for search engines such as Google, is a paragraph summarizing what I expect will be his platform:

<meta name="description" content="John Lewis is a 4th generation Montanan who puts politics aside to find solutions to Montana's challenges. John is focused on creating good-paying jobs, cutting the debt and working together to do what's right for veterans, seniors, small businesses, blue-collar families, farms and ranches--and our children and grandchildren." />

Let’s rearrange that:

Translation: I’m one of you, a man with a Montana birthright. I’m not a partisan Democrat. I’ll reach across the aisle seeking common ground with reasonable Republicans. The national debt is a monster, not a bogeyman, and I’ll act accordingly. Like everyone who ever ran for political office, I’m focused on creating jobs that pay well. I think I’ll win by getting the votes of veterans, seniors, small businessmen, blue collar workers, and farmers and ranchers.

If that sounds like the bark of a pure Montana Blue Dog Democrat, it should. Lewis worked for Baucus and hired a political consulting firm with former Tester staffers.

The haste with which his website was thrown together suggests that Lewis decided to run only in the last few weeks, and that his website was a low priority while he worked to hire staff and consultants, to file with the Federal Elections Commission, to start raising money, and to do these things in time to attend Democratic Labor Day functions as a bona fide candidate.

Those priorities I understand, but cobbling together a website without a contact us link I do not understand. I'm sure his website will be updated fairly soon with a short biography, issues generalities, and contact information, but his current website is a modest contretemps that could have been avoided.