Rand Paul hands over $100,000 for website domain

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) learned a $100,000 lesson: If you're in the public eye — especially as a politician running for president — you need to snag every single .com, .org, .whatever associated with your name.

In March, a month before Paul formally announced he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, his Senate re-election campaign paid $100,000 to a third-party firm for the domain randpaul.com, the Los Angeles Times reports. While the site at one time was run by supporters of Paul, no one is sure who owned it at the time of the hefty payment. Two of Paul's GOP comrades made the same mistake of not securing their own domains, and they are now dealing with some online embarrassment: carlyfiorina.org shows 30,000 sad faces, representing the number of people laid off at Hewlett Packard while Carly Fiorina was chief executive, while tedcruz.com sports the decidedly non-Ted Cruz message "Support President Obama. Immigration reform now!"

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.