Sharron Angle Accuses Harry Reid of "Dirty Tricks" in Campaign Website Scuffle
Updated at 6 p.m. ET to note that the Reid campaign has relaunched www.therealsharronangle.com.
Nevada's Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is accusing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of using "dirty tricks" on a campaign website that attacked Angle's relatively extreme positions on some issues -- but Reid's camp says it is simply putting Angle's own views on display for voters.
Angle's campaign sent a cease and desist letter to the Reid campaign last week after the Nevada Democrat re-published an earlier version of Angle's campaign website. The Reid campaign relaunched the site as www.therealsharronangle.com and claimed to reveal "the real Sharron Angle," the Nevada Appeal reports. The cease and desist letter (viewable here) claims that Reid's campaign violated copyright laws by launching a website that "mirrors the website of the Angle campaign... before it was redesigned."
As the Huffington Post reported last week, Angle's website was revamped after she won the Republican primary to give fewer details about her policy positions. The Huffington Post reported that "a comparison of the content from both websites shows dramatic, fundamental shifts in her policy platform. For instance, the candidate has gone from calling for the 'repeal' of 'regulations that prohibit off shore drilling' to a position that is, simply put, the exact opposite." Her positions on some issues, such as the nuclear waste dump facility at Yucca mountain, have been removed from the site.
The version of www.therealsharronangle.com that mirrored Angle's earlier campaign site has been removed. The URL in question, however, is still in use -- it redirects visitors to www.sharronsundergroundbunker.com, a site run by the Nevada Democratic Party.
"Make no mistake, the Reid campaign was forced to take this site down because they were breaking several laws and trying to deceive the voters," Angle spokesman Jerry Stacy said in a statement, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. "You're going to see a lot of dirty tricks like that from Reid's campaign."
A Reid campaign spokesman responded in a statement, "These are Sharron Angle's positions in Sharron's own words from Sharron's own website. What was good enough for Nevada voters to read during the primary should be good enough for them now."
UPDATE: The Reid campaign announced Tuesday afternoon that after temporarily taking down the site www.therealsharronangle.com for 24 hours "out of an abundance of caution," it has resurrected the site."The phony legal threats and the feigned indignation are over - and we're not going to let Sharron Angle retroactively censor Sharron Angle," the Reid campaign said in a release. "Just to be clear to Sharron Angle and her handlers, it's called free speech and it's nearly absolute under the First Amendment."
