California Faultline

5/30/08 update to this post here.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Veronique de Turenne at LA Times “L.A. Now” blog (here and here) wrote mentioning the similarities between Barack Obama’s website and that of for L.A. Councilman Bernard Park’s site for his run for County Supervisor. It goes far beyond merely looking the same - some of the background images are pulled from the Barack Obama site, the code is a complete match, and whoever “adapted” Obama’s site for Parks’ forgot to change one prominent link that takes you to an Obama page.

Compare:

Obama’s site — Parks for Supervisor’s site

Make no mistake about it - the designer knowingly copied Obama’s page.
After reaching out to Parks office for comment, Bernard C. Parks, Jr. replied, “The Parks for Supervisor Campaign hired 2-Way Star, Inc. to do the website. And, we are actively attempting to investigate the allegations.”
I pressed for an answer as to how Parks and his campaign site didn’t notice the similarity between their site and Obama’s, especially considering Parks boasts that he was one of the first people to endorse Obama, and photos of the two together are featured on the site.

Parks, Jr: “Since we were made aware of it, we’ve been trying to make contact with the company. So far we’ve been unsuccessful.”

While Parks, Jr. did give me an email he said was for the designer, he has yet to answer how this designer was chosen, and if the site was paid for. An message sent to the email given for the designer has not been returned.