Rand Paul paid $100,000 for domain name

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) paid more than $100,000 to buy a domain name shortly before launching his presidential campaign, according to campaign finance records. 

A little more than a week before the launch of his presidential campaign, Paul’s Senate reelection campaign paid $100,890 to Escrow.com in California, which describes itself as a trusted third-party to facilitate online purchases by reducing fraud among buyers and sellers online. 

{mosads}Paul’s campaign listed the buy as a “domain purchase.”

National Journal first spotted the buy in Paul’s first quarter financial disclosure report from last month. 

According to the records, the purchase was made March 27. The domain name RandPaul.com was updated on April 1. Paul launched his campaign with the new website on April 7. Paul’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

The domain name was going for $125,000 on a GoDaddy auction site last year. 

The topic of domain name purchases has made news in the past few weeks, as a number of candidates have launched presidential campaigns without ownership of their first and last name with a the coveted dot-com attached. 

Vincent Harris, Paul’s chief digital strategist, recently said top-level domain names are important, but critics should lay off campaigns that do not grab them up.  

“Yes, the .com matters but can we lay off people that don’t register every iteration of their name at every single [top-level domain],” he tweeted earlier this week.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) presidential campaign site, for example, is housed at TedCruz.org. The TedCruz.com address is a page supporting President Obama and comprehensive immigration reform. 

Carly Florina, a recently announced GOP contender, houses her site at carlyforpresident.com. CarlyFiorina.org is a page criticizing her time as CEO of Hewlett Packard. 

“You can’t buy every domain name,” she said Tuesday about not snatching up the address. “You just can’t. Maybe we should have tried, but we didn’t. And so people are going to do what they are going to do. But hopefully people will go to carlyforpresident.com instead.”