The Maryland Democratic Party has put up a website dedicated to smearing Ken Ulman’s opponent in the general election. Honestly, the website says the Maryland Democratic party but that is impossible to verify since the email address they provide doesn’t work, and the domain name is registered through an anonymous third party. Why would they want to remain anonymous? Why are they hiding? What are they hiding?
Update: I used a couple web based utilities to look up the IP address and Domain Name Server for the smear website who’s name I will not write. Using www.getanyip.com I found that the ip address for the smear web site is the same as www.kenulman.com. People may ask, how can two or more websites have the same IP address? I assure you it is possible. It is called NAME RESOLUTION and it is done at the ISP domain name server and is used as a means of pereserving IP addresses. Then I used www.dnsstuff.com and found that the domain name servers for both sites are the same as well and they are NS1.SCI-ISP.NET and NS2.SCI-ISP.NET. (Why is Ulman hosting his site with a California company – Merdon’s ISP has its corporate offices in Maryland). Traceroutes to both web sites are identical. Both sites are hosted by Sonoma County Internet – a business Ken Ulman has been doing business with since 9-8-2005 according to campaign finance reports.
If Ken Ulman is hosting this smear site (all indications are that he is) with the same ISP hosting his official website why isn’t he just coming right out and saying so instead of hiding behind the democratic party and anonymous registration information? Will he claim he had nothing to do with it just like the smear he ran against Joan Lancos. Why? Because he doesn’t want voters to associate him with these desperate tactics – it is consistent with the false image he is so desperately trying to portray of himself. It is consistent with a campaign devoid of any vision or plan of its own. It is a consistent with a campaign that has no other alternative but to resort to scare tactics. He can’t deny it. The evidence is clear. In addition, if one looks at the address side (mail to) of all of Ken’s mailers and the mailer for this web site – they are identical from set up, format, the line that seperates it from the fold above, font, and even the printer’s mark.
If he is trying to hide his involvement in negative smear tactics he isn’t very good at it.
Chris Merdon has stayed positive and on message during this entire campaign. He has not criticized Ken Ulman, yet Ken Ulman has continued to criticize Merdon at every turn. Ulman criticized Merdon for putting forth his plan for Howard County and what he would do as County Executive calling it election year rhetoric. Then he turns around and does the same thing. Then Ulman utilizes his majority on the County Council to stall legislation intended to help Senior citizens and hides behind his campaign contributors on the Commission on Aging. I guess it is not to be unexpected considering the tactics he used in 2002 in his primary and general election. Rather than campaign honestly and confront Chris directly on the issues he gets the Democratic Party to put up a website in order to spread mis-information. I don’t want to promote the site but it is full of innuendo and distortions, just like Ken’s resume (resume? you might ask. Wait ’til you read the Sunday paper). Oh yes, before I forget. Ken keeps changing his story. Wednesday night he said that Chris cut $130M from the school budget, now he say he only cut $36M. Well, if you are going to tell a distortion he should get his story straight. Will it be a $1B cut next week? He has proven that his campaign is devoid of ideas and integrity and is now desperately trying to cling to life. I guess he figures if he can smear Mary Kay Sigaty and win by 36 votes why can’t he do the same again.
He is desperate and it will only get worse. This in the first shot in a negative campaign that is going to swamp Howard County and Merdon is not going to play that game.
