Hillary Potter and the Boredom of the Phoenix. (Cartoon courtesy of Jeremy Pegg)
While Donald Trump has announced his pick of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as a running mate, political journalists are turning to website domains for digital crumbs about who Hillary Clinton’s choice for vice president might be.
But if you head towards ClintonKaine.com, ClintonBooker.com, or ClintonBiden.com, you’ll instead find cartoons like “Hillary Potter and the Boredom of the Phoenix” for Kaine, “Hillary Potter and the Prisoner of New Jersey” for Booker, and “Hillary Potter and the Half-Retired Prince” for Biden, as first flagged by CNN.
They’re all courtesy of a D.C. lawyer fusing his interests in cartooning and buying up potentially lucrative domains, who goes by the pen name Jeremy Pegg for his side gigs. (He’s not a Harry Potter fanatic, though he says he enjoyed the books.)
“I started buying domains for this election cycle about five years ago, in 2011,” Pegg tells DCist, noting that the Kaine website was his first purchase for the 2016 campaign. But this isn’t his first time in the game—he’s been squatting on Santorum-2012.com for years, using it as a food blog for nourishment that resembles the neologism of the former senator’s last name popularized by Dan Savage.
Purchasing domains before campaigns has been a popular way to troll politicians. When Carly Fiorina launched her presidential campaign last May, CarlyFiorina.org was dedicated to the GOP candidate’s role in layoffs at Hewlett-Packard, and TedCruz.com currently has a picture of Hillary Clinton with the words “Next President of the United States of America!!!”
But Pegg says that, for him, “it was always about money and doing things with the websites. These websites are a good platform to do little stunts.”
In addition to the Kaine, Booker, and Biden sites, Pegg also bought up domains like ClintonWarner.com, for the other Virginia senator. “Most of them aren’t worth anything now,” he acknowledges, though he says he did turn a profit selling Cruz2016.com and BidenWarren.com for $1,500 each this cycle, the latter to “a GOP dentist in Florida who just wanted a piece of the action.” He’s still not sure who bought up the Cruz site.
“I bought [the domains] knowing that I probably wouldn’t get the right combo, but if I did the payoff would be big enough to justify it,” Pegg says, estimating that he could score anywhere between 10 and 20 thousand dollars if Clinton picks one of the three he owns. “I’m going crazy waiting for this decision because it’s going to have a big impact on my life.”
Pegg has been in a friendly competition with the guy squatting on ClintonCastro.com, in case the VP pick is Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro. “I think he’s gonna rub it in my face if it’s Castro,” says Pegg.
He says he plans on voting for Clinton, and his dream ticket would have her sharing the stage with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (aka ambitious Ravenclaw prefect Elizabeth Warlock), “but I just don’t have her domain. All three of the people I have would be great running mates, Cory Booker especially.”
Based on the cartons, Pegg does not seem so hot on “Timotonous Kaine from Hufflepuff. Yes, he was dull, and not particularly pleasing to the eye. But everybody seemed to agree that—aside from Helga Hufflepuff herself—there had never been a Hufflepuff as ‘Hufflepuff’ as Timotonous Kaine.”
As for Clinton? Well Pegg is inclined to think she’s a Gryffindor. “Everyone likes to think they’e a Gryffindor,” he says, but he is willing to concede that the Sorting Hat might have different plans for him. “Buying these kind of domains is the thing a Slytherin would do,” he says.
Rachel Kurzius