Candidates may find domain names taken

OLYMPIA – Running for office – or even thinking about it? Here’s a hint: Buy your domain name before your critics do.

State Attorney General candidate John Ladenburg, a Democrat, got an unpleasant surprise last week when he discovered that someone else had bought the rights to www.johnladenburg.com and www.johnladenburg.org.

Both, it turns out, are owned by Matthew Lundh, treasurer and political director of the King County Republicans. Lundh said he bought them in November, after seeing Ladenburg listed as a candidate on a Democratic holiday party invitation.

Ladenburg calls himself “the rightful owner” of that domain. In a preemptive e-mail to political reporters, he speculated that Republicans might use the domain for a critical or spoof Web site. Although someone else buying the domain “is not a crime,” he wrote, “it is purposeful, and if used to spread lies and misleading information, then I do consider it a type of theft.” He’d much rather you visit www.ladenburg.org, a site he’s owned for years.

Lundh said he had no plans to put up a hit Web site.

“I registered it more to make a point,” he said. The point: that someone who’s made identity theft and cybercrime a key angle of attack on Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna should at least know enough about the Internet to buy his own name.

“He’s kind of way out of his league here,” said Lundh. “You’d think he probably would have registered this 15 years ago.”

Still, Lundh said he’ll happily transfer the sites to Ladenburg, if he’s reimbursed for the $7.95 or so he paid for each. He’s never heard anything from Ladenburg or the campaign, he said.

“If they want them, they can have them,” he said.

What other domains are still available? A quick check shows that all the major “gregoire” domains have been bought up, mostly by Gregoires who have no obvious link to Gov. Chris Gregoire. All the “rossi” domains are also gone.

Surprisingly, www.chrisgregoire.biz remains available, as does www.dinorossi.biz. At least for now.

Good news for real estate?

As lawmakers and state officials huddled in Olympia last week to receive mostly cloudy news from state economist Steve Lerch, there was a bit of good news.

Lerch, the chief economic weather forecaster for legislative budget writers, predicts that the state’s declining housing market will “start to come back later this year.”

State revenue is predicted to decrease about $224 million over the next three years, he said, partly from legislation but largely because of the soft economy. Inflation and oil prices rose this spring as employment growth and income slowed.

Still, Lerch said, personal income growth is stronger here than in most of the U.S., and the foreclosure rate remains relatively low. Lerch predicts weak but positive employment growth in the foreseeable future.

“We’re forecasting that Washington is not going to be in a recession,” he said.

“It’s kind of hard to say you’ve hit the bottom until you see it in the rear view mirror,” said Rep. Jim McIntire, D-Seattle, an economist who heads the revenue forecast council that Lerch was reporting to. “My sense is that we’re beginning to see through the murk and can see the bottom coming up. So we’re not there yet, but it’s reasonably close.”

Governor counters criticism from builders

Decrying “another blitz of radio attacks,” Gov. Chris Gregoire’s campaign this week sent out an appeal to beat back the criticism – with cash.

“Please make a contribution to send a message that we deserve better than the dirty politics of George Bush Republicans,” read the e-mail to supporters.

To counter the Building Industry Association of Washington’s criticism, Gregoire’s campaign has set up its own “fight the attacks” Web page.

Ballot measures: who’s got cash …

According to the Public Disclosure Commission, here’s a peek into the checkbooks of ballot measure campaigns this year.

•Initiative 985 (Tim Eyman’s measure designed to steer more money into transportation projects, synch up more traffic lights and let everyone drive in carpool lanes during off-peak hours): $511,170 raised.

•Initiative 1000 (Which would allow physicians to legally prescribe lethal drugs to late-stage terminally ill people who want to end their lives): Proponents have raised about $1.2 million. Opponents, known as the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, have raised less than $91,000.

•Initiative 1029 (A union-backed measure to expand training and some background-check requirements for some health care workers): Raised $350,000.

•Initiative 1030 (Aimed at holding down property taxes): $9,640 raised.

How do these compare to the most expensive ballot-measure-fights the state has seen? So far, nowhere close. Initiative 330, primarily a doctors-versus-lawyers fight over medical malpractice liability, was the most expensive such battle in state history, with $16 million spent by both sides.

Other biggies, according to PDC records: $15.4 million on a tort-reform fight last year, $7.7 million battling over an effort to expand tribal gaming in 2004, $7 million spent in 1997, mostly by proponents of public stadium funding and $5 million in 2006, over a property-rights measure patterned after a controversial Oregon law.