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Jeremy Green Eche took a chance and purchased the website HarrisWalz.com for $8.99 in 2020 when then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California was seeking the Democratic nomination for president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just tried to grab her name and all the heartland governors I could think of,\u201d he recalled Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Four years later, if Harris selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Eche could be looking at a payday. He is willing to sell it \u2014 and a slate of over a dozen other Harris websites \u2014 for $15,000, he says.<\/p>\n
This is not a new scenario for the 36-year-old trademark lawyer in New York City\u2019s Brooklyn borough. Eche is a cyber squatter, a person who buys a domain with someone else\u2019s name or brand for very little money, hoping to sell it to that person or brand for a large profit in the subsequent months or years. It is also called domain investing, given it can reap significant rewards.<\/p>\n
In 2011, five years before Hillary Clinton selected Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to be her running mate in the presidential race, Eche \u2014 then known as Jeremy Peter Green, before he got married \u2014 purchased ClintonKaine.com. After the former secretary of state made the pick, the squatter offered it to the campaign for a hefty return. They declined, so he sold it for $15,000 to a digital marketing company that turned out to be the Trump campaign. The website pushed anti-Clinton news with \u201cPaid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc\u201d emblazoned at the bottom.<\/p>\n
Harris spent the weekend\u00a0interviewing a half dozen potential running mates<\/a>, including Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, according to two people with knowledge of Harris\u2019 selection process. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private campaign deliberations.<\/p>\n She is said to be making her decision imminently and has a slate of planned events with her running mate this week.<\/p>\n Eche told the AP that he has not been contacted by anyone connected to the Harris campaign. In 2016, it took a week after Clinton selected Kaine before he connected with anyone from the Clinton campaign, and that was because he had a connection to the operation.<\/p>\n He is skeptical Harris\u2019 campaign will reach out before they officially make the pick.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully (Harris\u2019) people are a little more savvy than Clinton\u2019s people were,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Eche owns at least 15 websites tied to Harris and her selection of a possible running mate. In addition to Walz, he also owns HarrisPritzker.com, a nod to the Illinois governor; HarrisEvers.com, for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers; HarrisFetterman.com, for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman; HarrisWarnock.com, for Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock; HarrisPeters.com, for Michigan Sen. Gary Peters; and several others.<\/p>\n But Eche does have a favorite among her prospective veeps.<\/p>\n \u201cWalz is my favorite,\u201d he said. \u201cOf the people she is thinking about, Walz makes the most sense.\u201d<\/p>\n He also owns 10 websites featuring Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer\u2019s name and other Democrats, with an eye toward a possible 2028 presidential run.<\/p>\n Eche\u2019s Walz website is now simply a blank chartreuse with the governor\u2019s name in lower-case black letters, a callback to the artist\u00a0Charli XCX labeling Harris \u201cbrat\u201d in a tweet<\/a>\u00a0shortly after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, allowing the vice president to take on his operation.<\/p>\n That was his wife\u2019s idea, he said. But the site links to his startup\u2019s website \u2014 Communer, a site to buy and sell domains and trademarks \u2014 where he is offering the Harris slate for $15,000.<\/p>\n Eche supported Clinton in 2016, and he supports Harris this cycle. Yet his experience from 2016 \u2014 where his website turned into a pro-Trump site \u2014 doesn\u2019t give him any pause in selling the Harris sites this time around.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Harris campaign has hundreds of millions of dollars, so if they don\u2019t buy their own domain, that is kind of on them,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to sell it to somebody. I know I could just donate it, but that is not really how this works. People with billboards aren\u2019t donating their billboards to the campaign. It is just a property basically.\u201d<\/p>\n A Harris spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked whether the plan to buy the domains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n