Chip Limehouse Website Leads to Another Candidate's

In preparing to run for Congress a candidate has to worry about many things. Fundraising, scheduling, messaging, and not incidentally, where he or she stands on the issues.

Among the concerns that are relatively new in historical terms is the candidate’s presence on the Internet, specifically the candidate’s website.

For a candidate without name recognition, the website is a source of information for voters. In a race that includes Mark Sanford, Ted Turner’s son and Stephen Colbert’s sister, getting yourself introduced to voters is critical. And the candidate’s website is a great place to do that.

So, if voters were to type in www.chiplimehouse.com they would expect to find information about the Representative from District 110 who is now running for the 1^st District Congressional Seat. Except it doesn’t, it instead goes to another candidate, S.C. Rep. Peter McCoy.

The good news for Limehouse is that if someone types “Chip Limehouse” into a search engine they’ll be taken to the official campaign site, www.chiplimehouse.net

Neither campaign provided an immediate comment on the situation.

While the confusion probably won’t be the difference in winning and losing, it does illustrate a few things.

Every detail matters in a political campaign, especially in a short race like the one for SC1. And something like buying the candidate’s domain name can be easily overlooked.

It also points to the ever-expanding importance of the Internet in politics—which at this stage would seem to be self-evident.

Candidates and political organizations purchase domain names (i.e., www.chiplimehouse.net) all the time. Sometimes for their use; sometimes to prevent someone else from using it. Sometimes the names never get used.

Buying the name does require some foresight. For example, someone bought BarackObama.net on July 27, 2004, which happens to be the date of his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. The site has no official relationship to the President, but no doubt gets plenty of visitors just because of its name.

The confusion over websites, clearly planned by Limehouse’s opponents, also provides insight into the level of intensity with which the campaign for SC1 will be waged.

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