In today’s Loose Lips column, the Sun-Star’s reporters conducted a very thorough and important look at the campaign web site of each City Council and mayoral candidate.
Before we close this latest chapter in half-hearted Internet campaigning, Merced Politics and TV can now disclose that we have discovered a major Internet-related SCANDAL in this year’s mayoral race.
Click here to visit http://www.ellieformayor.com. From the domain name, you probably think you’re going to find that glamor shot of our Mayor Ellie Wooten all looking like she just got out of a refreshing spa treatment and maybe take that survey to more fully participate in the direction of our fair City.
You might imagine our shock when we were immediately redirected to Rick Osorio’s campaign site. Apparently, someone in Osorio’s campaign — perhaps even the same volunteers who faked a union bug or faked endorsements or faked donation forms — set up a fake web site in order to convert the votes of Ellie Wooten supporters stunned by Osorio’s clever tricks.
It’s not as though Wooten supporters are going to change their votes because of a cybersquatted domain name which tells Osorio’s heart-rending life story. No, this is another petty, pointless trick, minor in the bigger picture of our County’s moral gray area.
Is the bait-and-switch web site illegal? No, it’s perfectly legal. But it’s more of the same from Osorio, the man who will tell anyone anything: straddling the ethics fence in order to get what he wants. We can surely expect more of the same politics-as-usual if Osorio’s elected to (somewhat) higher office.
Be warned, candidates: Merced Politics and TV is taking a long, hard look at our mayoral vote this year, and we don’t like what we see.
PS: It’s a little weird, too, that Mayor Ellie Wooten’s banner ad on the Sun-Star’s web site redirects to her personal business web site with the fetching headline Meeting your real estate needs!
UPDATE: We’re on the front page! Thanks again for the mention, Sun-Star. We trust your judgment, but are you sure this is really front-page news?
Tags: scandal, urgent communication of breaking news, web sites
November 2, 2007 at 6:21 pm |
It doesn’t surprise me at all. Though there was a rumor going around that it was Ellie’s site and was hacked. This makes more sense. I am beginning to wonder if there is a tie to the realtors and the mymerced.com. I removed all my links to that site today after discovering they had broken their word and my ad had apparently been removed without so much as an email notifying me even though I was promised the ad would not be removed unless I requested it to be. The whole front page is plastered with political ads now. I guess no good deed goes unpunished in Merced, CA.