August 30, 2012 10:11 PM UTC

Rule Number 1 of Political Web Design: Don't Rip Off Your Opponent

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• by: Colorado Pols

State Senator Pat Steadman’s recently-appointed opponent Michael Carr has put together an surprisingly professional professional campaign website — astonishing because Carr cannot win and he’s only been in the race for a month. Navigating you to electcarr.com  presents visitors with a sleek black and yellow color scheme, complete with a candidate bio, a diminutive issues page, contact info, and, of course, a blog and donation button. The website’s not perfect. There’s no substantive text anywhere — the issues page is only 76 words long — and there’s not a single photo of Carr to be found.

Still, for a first-time candidate who only recently moved to Colorado and who only recently found out he’d be running for office, Carr’s done a pretty good job. That’s likely the result of Carr’s background in internet marketing.

Given the candidate’s experience as founder of Aspirant Marketing, a firm which announces that “We do Internet marketing. We do it because we’re passionate about it (and because we’re good at it),” you’d think that Carr would have the professional (and common) sense not to steal language from his opponent’s website.

He doesn’t.

Carr’s District Map page is nearly identical to Steadman’s.

Here’s Carr’s: