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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Lincoln Davis Steals A Website: Your Overnight Lack of Democrat Technologists Having Original Thoughts

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  February 13th, 2010 at 01:20 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I read this article:

The New York Times Bay Area Blog recently took a look at the issue of plagiarism among students in computer science classes. The widespread availability of code on the Internet makes it easy for computer science students to find solutions to common assignments. Computer science professors retaliate by devising increasingly sophisticated automated systems to detect instances of code plagiarism.

And it made me think about my friends at the Stoneridge Group — the best political mail shop in America, and increasingly one of the best web design firms for candidates in America. I love these guys.

(As an aside, if you’re a candidate, you should be using these guys. They win. And they aren’t paying me to say that. Back when I was doing political consultant, I either used them or knew my guy was toast because the other guy was using them.)

In any event, Stoneridge Group designed this website for Nathan Deal, the present congressman and a candidate for governor in the state of Georgia.

It’s a pretty unique look for a website with the column formatting on the right and all the linkage at bottom with the central photo. The site has been up for a while.

Well, I guess it was so good that some Democrat web designers decided to steal it.

First came the Pinellas County Democrats with their Kennedy-King Dinner. Recognize that format? Yeah, me too.

But even more blatantly is Congressman Lincoln Davis. Take a look. Right down to the obnoxiously in your face headshot of the old guy. Lincoln Davis even stole the gradient of the text and the “Act!”.

That’s just pathetic. Lincoln Davis has spent his whole time in Congress pretending to be a Republican while voting as a Democrat. Now he’s going so far as to steal a Repubican website template for his own campaign. The least he could do is give the Stoneridge Group some credit.

It just goes to show how good the Stoneridge Group has become. Even the Democrats want to copy them. And here I thought it was the Democrats who were supposed to be out front on the web.

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COMMENTS

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  • kenineastman

    Lincoln Davis (Couln’t his family even make up their minds between north and south?) should be embarrassed. I hope his opponent takes this and runs with it.

  • Sudipta B

    I own a campaign technology company, and we will sometimes borrow individual elements from one campaign site or another if it looks good — no use re-inventing the wheel, after all, and it’s a nod to good design from a fellow designer. Even the Nathan Deal website seems to borrow from the “Obama shadow/underline” made famous by Obama’s site.

    But this isn’t “borrowing”. This is a blatant rip-off.

  • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com Beaglescout

    Lincoln Davis’s site looks terrible and unreadable in IE. I haven’t tried it in FF yet. So he copied the look without even getting it right.

  • Vladimir

    I just followed your link & it looks nothing like the Deal site. Just a B&W photo montage, no links.

  • roscopico

    Nothing on the wayback machine either.

  • tngal

    Couldn’t find the sweet spot to turn my cursor into an arrow so it was difficult to click on any links. Plus the letters kept jumbling together. But as I’m not a big fan I wasn’t too stressed.

    OTOH..
    Here’s a guy I’m watching closely. Dr. Scott DesJarlais (DAY-JAR-LAY) .

    The southern political report pegged him as – opposing high taxes, big government, and ?government run? health care, He’s also pro-life, supports traditional marriage, big on 2nd Amendment rights..but that’s a given. Even the libs are big on gun rights in TN. I’m waiting for him to make the rounds . Technically, he only officially announced his candidacy a couple of days ago.. So far he looks good but am hoping to hear from others who might have more info on the guy. Here’s his webby. http://www.scottdesjarlais.com

  • gator_hoo

    http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:E45Cf_X6r3IJ:www.kennedykingdinner.com/+kennedy+king+dinner&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

  • http://www.havearoach.com Lee Hempfling

    Lincoln Davis is running a WordPress theme, while Deal is inside an asp package. Not the same at all. There is no such thing as copyright on navigation locations, appearance and similarity. There are a great many things one can do to pick on Democrats but using your site as commercial for a web company is a tad greasy.

  • Trelaina

    the point is that rather than come up with their own design, they COPIED a design by a successful design company. Laziness. They’ll get away with it of course, but it’s good to point it out.

  • Nick Haynes

    I’m not paid, but I’ve created a few websites in my day (some political, others not). Sometimes I see a design that inspires me in some way, and I’ll take bits and pieces from it, from other sites, and from my own thoughts, and mix it together to create something new.

    But this couldn’t be more blatant if it had a “Paid for by Deal for Governor” disclaimer at the bottom.

  • Nick Haynes

    -nt-

  • Nick Haynes

    Oh wait, that wasn’t supposed to be thrown back at you, was it?

    In any case, Erick’s “commercial” for The Stoneridge Group is simply giving props to a campaign consulting firm that does great work for Republicans. Were we so lucky that we had hundreds of Republican firms throughout the country that are this good with web design and implementation.

  • BoatFoot

    The sites are two different sets of coding architecture and different sets of code. The “look-n-feel” is not that dissimiliar from other designs I have seen, though maybe not in the political arena as much.

    Personally I don’t like either site. Super sized pictures and some pretty cosmetics don’t do much if the sites don’t provide needed information. In this regard, Deal’s site is a failure.

    I’m from Gwinnett County and know little of Deal. Little anecdotes and phrases, that he is “conservative”, a leader”, “dedicated”, “against earmarks” tells me little of a guy that has served for years in Congress and now wants to be Governor. In fact, for someone that represents the next district over I know nothing about him and only knew him by name only in the past when he was in some sort of list.

    When I go to a politician’s site, I want information. What Ga legislation is he for and why? What is he against? What specific programs would he like to cut or create and why. How does he feel about the outer loop, or the “Brain Train” or building another regional airport and other transportation issues? How does he feel about the push to eliminate property taxes, how will he fund and implement the Ready when Move On Act? How is he going to handle ongoing Hope funding. What bills did he author in his years in Congress, what was the outcome? What is his historic voting record? Did he vote for No Child Left Behind or Medicare Part-D, or Tarp?

    This type information is not on his site, or at least it is buried somewhere I don’t have the time to find. I click on the “Ask Deal” and ask specific questions and have never received a response from his campaign. So what good is a site if it can’t engage a potential supporter regardless of cosmetics or some other politician borrowed some cosmetic ideas.

    It’s a waste of the power of RedState to grumble about such insignificant things. Lack of readily available detailed information and timely responses from a political campaign to questions posed is more of a serious issue to discuss.

    I’m still out looking for which Republican candidate for governor I am going to back.

  • RJD

    Viewing the source code:

    The Deal web site repeats the DocType throughout the code, something the Kennedy King site does as well (which should raise questions).

    As for Lincoln Davis’ site, someone might want to ask this guy where he gets his inspiration from:
    Gorgeous design by Michael Heilemann – http://binarybonsai.com/kubrick/

    I don’t know much about WordPress, but for those that do, is Kubrick one of the templates?