JonOssoff.com: Damaging to Jon Ossoff Campaign?

Jon Ossoff is a Democratic Party politician running for United States Senate in one of two run-off elections in the state of Georgia. Mr. Ossoff uses the short ElectJon.com domain name for his campaign website. This is a solid call to action domain name for his campaign, but I do not believe it is the ideal domain name for him. I believe the matching JonOssoff.com domain name would be better. Unfortunately, someone beat Mr. Ossoff to the punch, and even more unfortunate for his campaign, it is being used against him by a rival political organization:

👀 NEW: https://t.co/2MHik9rXup

How many times does @ossoff need to lose before learning to buy his domain name? #GASen #gapol

— The Senate Majority (@NRSC) December 2, 2020

If you visit JonOssoff.com, as someone might do to learn more about Mr. Ossoff, the website is filled with negative information about Mr. Ossoff and his political record. On the bottom of the website, there is a note that says, “PAID FOR BY NRSC. NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE. WWW.NRSC.ORG.” NRSC stands for National Republican Senatorial Committee, an “organization solely devoted to strengthening the Republican Senate Majority and electing Republicans to the United States Senate.”

The Whois record for JonOssoff.com is private, so it is unclear who actually owns the domain name. The domain name was created in February of 2017, and its Whois record has been private since then.

According to a Wikipedia entry for Mr. Ossoff, this is his second time running for US Senate in Georgia – “Ossoff announced his candidacy for this special election on January 5, 2017.” Considering the domain name seems to have been available for Mr. Ossoff to register when he ran for office in the 2017 special election, it seems like a good lesson for other politicians and people in the public eye to consider. If there is an opportunity to buy a first and last name .com domain name – take it. Once someone else has it, they can pretty much use it how they wish, particularly if their usage is protected by their First Amendment rights.

In the 2017 special election, Mr. Ossoff lost by around 10,000 votes (nearly 4% of the vote). While the loss was almost certainly unrelated to not having the JonOssoff.com domain name, not owning it certainly did him no favors.

All things considered, ElectJon.com is a pretty decent domain name for Mr. Ossoff. However, having to compete against his full name .com domain name in an election is not great and could be damaging to his campaign. In addition, because a domain name is so inexpensive, not registering JonOssoff.com in 2017 could have negative implications for future elections as well.