Menino camp tries to curb cybertricks
Buys Web addresses to be safe
They're not nice names, even in the rough-and-tumble world of the Internet: meninomumbles.com, mumblesmenino.org, mumblesmeninoformayor.net.
The Menino Committee, apparently hoping to foil opponents or enemies or anyone else who might decide to launch a website that makes fun of the mayor's sometimes-mangled diction, has bought the rights to just about every conceivable variation, including mumblesmouthmeninoformayor05.com.
''We bought both positive and negative domain names," said Beth Leonard, campaign manager for Thomas M. Menino. She would not go into details.
The mayor, who said he did not know anything about the purchases, has in recent years embraced the name that has dogged him for years. Instead of avoiding it, as he once did, he has written it into speeches and publicly flaunted it with more refined or better-educated adversaries to cast himself as an everyman's mayor. It is an image that has made him one of the most popular leaders in the city's history.
''I've done pretty well for a guy who mumbles," he said last week, reciting a now-familiar refrain. ''We're not in a speech class; it's not a debating society. We're here for getting hands-on, for getting the job done."
Still, his campaign clearly does not want the mumbles issue to fall into the wrong hands. In the last few years, the Internet has become a vital political medium, and the rush for choice domain names often begins months, or even years, before a candidate announces for office. With a universe of website names available for $10 or $20 each, it has become standard practice for campaigns to preempt political mischief, and squatters who demand big money for prime cyberreal estate, by buying up as many domain names as they can think of.
''It's like the wild West," said Lawrence S. DiCara, a former city councilor who keeps close tabs on Boston politics.
Politicians who neglect to understand the impact of Web addresses have regretted it. In January, almost two years before the next gubernatorial election, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly discovered that state Republicans had already snatched up some of his best picks for website names, including reillyforgovernor.com and reillyforgovernor06.com.
In the case of Menino's nickname, veterans of local races say it's simply good politics to preempt unwanted exploitation of it. As former city councilor Michael J. McCormack said, ''People who like the mayor don't use that name."
Menino said he did not expect his opponents would start a ''mumbles" attack site. ''I don't think they would stoop to that level," he said.
But he suggested his campaign aides were probably concerned about an interest group or individual with a score to settle.
Mitch Kates, campaign manager for City Councilor Maura Hennigan, one of Menino's opponents, said the thought had not crossed his mind.
''We're not going to do anything negative, because we want to run an issues race, not a negative campaign," he said.
Kates, a former wrestler who was once known as ''Jason the Terrible," briefly gave the Menino campaign reason to suspect otherwise. When speaking to a group of Boston University students in March, just after he joined Hennigan's campaign, he likened Menino to ''a big teddy bear with drool coming from his mouth." Horrified, Hennigan ordered Kates to deliver a letter of apology to the mayor.
Kates has been minding his manners ever since. Asked yesterday whether he thought his boss was more articulate than the mayor, he declined to answer.
''Maura Hennigan," he said, ''is a very articulate speaker."
Meanwhile, it turns out that some more standard Web addresses are not available to the Menino camp. Three addresses -- meninoformayor.com, menino2005.com, and reelectmenino.com -- were all bought by the oldies radio station AM 830 WCRN. The Frank Foley Show snapped up the addresses in January as a publicity stunt, saying they would give them up only if Menino paid a ransom of two dozen doughnuts.
''We don't negotiate with people who take domain names hostage," Leonard said.
The campaign's official website, formayormenino.com, may sound suspiciously like leftovers, but Leonard said it was the campaign's first choice. The mayor has been using that slogan on his bumper stickers and yard signs for years, she said. 