Hey aspiring Maine Governors, who did your site?
The 2010 Maine gubernatorial campaign has started in earnest. With over 20 people announcing their candidacy, there’s no shortage of people signing up for what is arguably the worst job in the state. For most of the candidates, bringing jobs to Maine is a campaign cornerstone, so it would stand to reason that those candidates would hire Mainers for their own campaigns whenever possible, right?
Today several of tweets and retweets pointed out the apparent hypocrisy in Eliot Cutler’s nascent campaign because he allegedly hired a New Hampshire based design firm to develop his website. It made me wonder who designed the other candidate’s sites. As a Portland-based web developer, I can attest to the fact that there are plenty of highly qualified designers and developers in our home state. So how do the candidates stack up?
Methodology
I used a number of methods to try to determine who designed each of these candidates’ websites. Many of them don’t advertise who created their sites. Thus, there is some sleuthing, and admittedly a bit of guesswork, to nail down every one. I’ve tried to be as transparent as possible by explaining my conclusions for each candidate. I’ve given each candidate a grade of “Pass” (the candidate used a Maine design firm), “Fail” (the candidate did NOT use a Maine firm), or “Unknown” (I wasn’t able to determine with absolute certainty).
Republicans
Matt Jacobson – PASS
- Site: http://www.jacobsonforgovernor.com
- Design Firm: Axon (Portland, ME)
- Jacobson’s site proudly displays “Designed and Developed by AXON,” as it should, he has nothing to hide! The site is based on PHP.
Paul LePage – PASS
- Site: http://www.lepage2010.com
- Design Firm: Sutherland Weston (Bangor, ME)
- I had to dig to figure this one out – the author is in a meta tag in the document head. It’s another PHP based site.
Peter Mills – PASS
- Site: http://www.millsformaine.com
- Mills’ site is based on Wordpress with a “premium” theme by WooThemes called “The Station.” The Station was developed by self-aggrandized South African web designer Adii “Rockstar” Pienaar. It’s likely that a designer purchased the theme and helped Mills customize it. If so, I can’t figure out who that designer is or if he/she/they are based in Maine. Based on the site’s IP address, it is hosted by a San Fransisco based company called ServePath.
- I contacted the Mills campaign via e-mail to ask who designed their site, but did not get a response.
- UPDATE: I heard back from the Mills campaign, too. Their site design was done by New Portland native Stephanie Dunn, who lives in New Portland, ME. Bravo, Mills campaign, I upgraded you to “PASS” !
Les Otten – PASS
- Site: http://www.lesotten.com
- Design Firm: INSYT new media (Farmington, ME)
- Otten caught a lot of flack early on in the campaign for the not-so-subtle resemblance of his site and “O” logo to those used in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. His site displays the site design company in the footer. Otten’s site is based on PHP.
Bruce Poliquin – FAIL
- Site: http://bruceforme.com
- Design Firm: Headlamp Creative Studio (Greenville, SC)
- I honestly don’t remember how I tracked this one down, it wasn’t easy. But if you go to Headlamp Creative Studio’s site, they show a carousel of featured sites from their portfolio, and Poliquin’s site shows up there. The domain name is also registered to a South Carolinian. The site was built using our old friend, PHP.
J. Martin Vachon – n/a
- Site: http://home.midmaine.com/~vachonelec/Marty/index.html
- Vachon’s site doesn’t appear to be professionally designed.
Democrats
Donna Dion – PASS
- Site: http://donnajdionforgovernor2010.com/
- This site is winner of the “longest domain name” award.
- From the attributes on the html element, this site appears to be a Microsoft Frontpage or Microsoft Word site (xmlns:o=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”). No credit is given for the design work. It appears to be hosted by CentralMaineWeb.com, and that’s where the site’s name servers are. CentralMaineWeb does offer web design services, but the designs in their portfolio don’t seem similar to Dion’s site, so I don’t think they did hers.
- I contacted the Dion campaign via e-mail to ask who designed their site, but did not get a response.
- UPDATE: I just heard from Donna Dion this morning (Dec 11), and she informs me that she did the site design herself. That definitely qualifies as Maine-grown, so I’ve upgraded her site to PASS.
Dawn Hill – PASS
- Site: http://www.dawnhillforgovernor.com
- Design Firm: Shines and Jecker Laboratories (Portland, ME)
- To figure this one out, I had to dig into the CSS files on the page and find a stray copyright notice. That’s not a lot to go on, so there’s a small chance that I got this one wrong. Hill’s site appears to be a one-pager with links to third-party services, and likely is static.
- UPDATE: I got a tweet from Shines and Jecker Laboratories (I didn’t notice that they’re on Twitter!). Apparently they did do the interface production, but the design itself was by Walter Craven of the local band Lost on Liftoff. Neat!
Libby Mitchell – UNKNOWN (Likely FAIL)
- Site: http://www.libbymitchellforgovernor.com/
- There’s no obvious indication of who designed this site. I noticed that the domain name was registered by a “Startled Marmot LLC.” Startled Marmot is a smallish firm based in Santa Monica, CA that does, among other things, web design. From their website, it appears that their IT group might be based in Brookline, MA. The site was registered by “Chief Marmot,” Evan McGee. Evan McGee follows only 22 people on Twitter, and Libby Mitchell (and her daughter, Emily) are among them. I can’t find a direct way to tie Mitchell’s site to these designers any other way, and it’s entirely possible that McGee is a personal friend of Mitchell’s who acquired the domain name on her behalf, but the design was done by someone else entirely. The site is being served by Apache and hosted by Utah-based Bluehost, but I can’t tell what technologies are in use other than that (they could very well be static pages).
- I contacted the Mitchell campaign via Twitter to ask who designed their site, but did not get a response. I was unable to find an easy way to contact their campaign via e-mail (site designers, take note).
John G. Richardson – FAIL
- Doesn’t appear to have any web presence.
- Yikes! Looks like John Richardson does indeed have a site… my Google Mojo missed this one somehow!
- Site: http://www.johnrichardsonformaine.com/
- Design Firm: NGP Software (Washington, DC)
- I had a difficult time finding this site when I first wrote this blog post. In my defense, “John Richardson” is a very common name, but searching on Google again this morning for “John Richardson Maine,” you can find the campaign site as the fifth entry on the list. I apologize for missing it earlier.
- Richardson’s site attributes its design to Washington, DC based NGP Software, who specializes in “Technology for Winning Campaigns.” Perhaps not so much at SEO.
Steve Rowe – PASS
- Site: http://www.roweforgovernor.com
- This site was designed using ColdFusion and is served by IIS. There is no attribution that I can find, and nothing lurking in the page sources to give any indication who did the work. From its IP address, it looks like it is being served by CrystalTech, based in Phoenix, AZ. I happen to know a local web developer who uses this host, but it doesn’t look like his work. So I can’t even make an educated guess on this one, although the fact that it was written in ColdFusion should significantly reduce the number of likely designers.
- I contacted the Rowe campaign via e-mail to ask who designed their site, but got no response.
- UPDATE: I just heard back from the Steve Rowe campaign. According to their e-mail: “Marc Cerabona of DigitalTurf.net designed our website and manages it.” It’s not clear to me where DigitalTurf is located, but a search on LinkedIn for Marc Cerabona shows an Internet professional in the Portland, ME area. So I’m going to call this one a PASS.
Rosa Scarcelli – FAIL
- Site: http://rosaformaine.com
- Design Firm: Liberty Concepts (Boston, MA)
- Scarcelli’s site was designed by Liberty Concepts, a company that seems to specialize in campaign and civic activism sites. Liberty Concepts was also responsible for designing Tom Allen’s site for his failed U.S. Senate bid, as well as Mike Michaud’s site.
Green Independent
Lynne Williams – FAIL
- Site: http://www.lynnewilliams2010.org
- Design Firm: Eleana Whitesell Design (Portland, OR)
- Williams’ site has a “made by” attribution in its footer. Eleana Whitesell Design is based in Portland, but (unfortunately), it’s the wrong Portland.
Independent/Non-Committed
Eliot Cutler – FAIL
- Site: http://www.cutler2010.com/
- Design Firm: Raka Creative (Portsmouth, NH)
- This is the case that made a splash on Twitter today, and led to this writeup. The footer on his campaign site clearly states “Raka” as the design firm, which links to Raka Creative’s site.
Alex Hammer – n/a
- Site: http://www.hammer2010.com
- Hammer is using a Blogger hosted campaign site, with the default Blogger theme.
John Whitcomb – n/a
- Site: http://whitcombformaine.com
- Whitcomb’s site was built using Yahoo! SiteBuilder
Comments?
This concludes the sleuthing that I could do, I’m sure there are others out there who are better at it than me. Can any of you figure out the designers for the ones that I couldn’t figure out? I’d love to hear from the candidates themselves – why did you select the designer that you’re using? Did I get it wrong for any of them? Drop me a line and let me know!
December 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I designed our site, and we are looking at a redesign. Thus far we have focused on the content, to let Mainers know what we offer (e.g. economic recovery plan for Maine and much more).
December 10th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I might add that the last time we tracked it we had the 4th most web traffic of the over 20 candidates for Maine Governor:
http://www.hammer2010.com/2009/09/hammer-website-moves-from-fifth-to.html
Thanks.
December 10th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Here’s the facts on Lynne Williams website.
Yes the coding was done by Eleana Whitesell, who currently lives in Portland, Oregon, but she has strong Maine roots. Eleana is the daughter of Jamilla El-Shafei of Kennebunk, who is arguably one of the most progressive activists in Maine. Jamilla organized both of the large anti-war rallies in Kennebunkport during the Bush years, and she is a leader in the efforts to prevent Nestle from mining water from Maine.
Eleana knows Lynne and she offered to do the site when she learned that Lynne would run for governor. She works long hours for very little pay. Eleana set up the original WordPress coding based on my requirements.and got the site up and running. All the content is Maine-produced and since it was set up the site has been managed by the campaign staff here in Maine.
You may consider that a failure, but I believe you have an obligation to update your page (http://mikedesjardins.us/wordpress/2009/12/hey-aspiring-maine-governors-who-did-your-site/) to indicate that the site is Maine-designed and Maine run.
David Bright
campaign manager
Williams Campaign Committee
234-4224
December 10th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
@Alex You should update those stats, I think you are 7th or so. Plus, traffic alone is not a great way to measure the success of a website.
You could have 1000 visitors each month that do nothing, and I could have 100 visitors each month that make a campaign donation.
Alexa would see 1000 as a “better” site, even though in reality my 100 visitors/donors were higher quality visitors.
Definitely pursue the redesign, default blogger templates can water down your message.
December 10th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
@David
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
Unfortunately, I stand by my original conclusion. It’s great that Eleana has roots in Maine, and I even attended one of the Kennebunkport rallies that her father organized (when Vladimir Putin visited the Bush compound), so I’m grateful to him for that.
But in an election where job creation for Mainers is such a vital issue, it’s disheartening to see candidates choose to spend their campaign dollars outside the state, for what could have been done right at home. I’m sure Eleana is a wonderful person with a family who actively contributes to Maine. But even if the job was inexpensive, those are dollars that could had stayed local. If I’m not mistaken, embracing a local economy is one of the major tenets of the Green Party, isn’t it?
Nearly every candidate’s site is “maintained” locally, and that’s not something that is unique to the Lynne campaign. That’s why sites use a CMS like Wordpress (or Drupal or one of scores of others). If the candidates were unable to keep their sites up-to-date with the latest campaign news, they’d be very little use to anyone. That’s why I tried to uncover was who styled the site, not who maintained the content.
Again, thanks for participating!
December 12th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I got an e-mail from the Scarcelli campaign this morning… here’s what it said:
“Hey Mike,
I work for Rosa Scarcelli. Saw your Tweets regarding candidate’s websites. A couple of points:
1. We did interview Maine-based web designers for the job.
2. Liberty Concepts won out due to their considerable experience with campaign websites, which other companies simply couldn’t match.
3. Liberty’s owner, Jonathan Karush, is from Vasselboro and has family here. Other staff members, including Christen Dute, designer, and Ashley Brann, office manager, are also from Maine, Topsham and Windsor, respectively. Their knowledge and relationship to Maine played a big part in our decision.
4. If Rosa is elected governor, she hopes to improve Maine’s business climate so companies like Jonathan’s can return to Maine.
Thanks.
DB”
he followed up later with the folowing: “Believe me, it wasn’t an easy decision on web designers. And there are a lot of great companies here in Maine. It was really the experience and contacts that Liberty has that won out.”
I pointed out in the post that several Maine candidates have also used Liberty Concepts (Tom Allen, Mike Michaud). I still think it’s unfortunate (and, frankly, a little difficult to believe) that no Maine companies could match their expertise; clearly many of the other candidates were able to find Maine firms to do their sites.
And I think the “roots in Maine” defense which both Scarcelli’s and Lynne’s campaign are using falls a little flat. The money and exposure went beyond Maine’s borders, when that money and exposure could have stayed right here at home.
December 12th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Interesting update Mike. Something that was not mentioned in the response letter was price. I wonder since budgets for gubernatorial candidates are so bare-bones, if that may have also been a consideration in picking web co’s.
December 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
It seems to me that with the somewhat disingenuous (and misguided, in my opinion) “jobs” mantra developing for this campaign that it would be a slam dunk to hire a Maine-based designer ensuring your online presence–apparently not.
For Richardson, there appears to be no excuse. This is the commissioner of DECD in the state.
Nice job of sleuthing, btw.
I don’t buy the “cost” argument, either. Money spent in Maine, stays in this state (some great data on that connected w/ Portland’s Buy Local campaign). Given the state’s revenue issues, Mainers, particularly Mainers hoping to be the next governor ought to understand that.
December 18th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Mike,
Wish I had seen this earlier. First off, look at the candidates that are privately financed vs those that are running clean elections. Unfortunately price is a huge concern and as a software developer yourself, you must realize how expensive it is to design a “front” and “back office” website/relations management database from scratch.
Sure, there probably are Maine companies that can do it. But if companies in Boston, San Fran, or D.C. have been doing it for years and have packaged products ready to implement with little to no customization or tweaking, tell me how a company who has never had experience in this very specific and demanding service in Maine can expect to compete on a cost-basis.
Are you going to ask the candidates who designed their relationship management databases and if they were Maine companies? What is Jacobson and LePage have website designs from Maine and the database management is outsourced.
December 20th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Jamilla El-Shafei is Eleana’s mother.