‘Cyber squatter’ owns 15 web sites named for Kamala Harris and potential operating mates

“I just tried to grab her name and all the heartland governors I could think of,” he recalled Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.

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 — and a slate of over a dozen other Harris websites — for $15,000, he says.

This is not a new scenario for the 36-year-old trademark lawyer in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. Eche is a cyber squatter, a person who buys a domain with someone else’s 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.

In 2011, five years before Hillary Clinton selected Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to be her running mate in the presidential race, Eche — then known as Jeremy Peter Green, before he got married — 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 “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc” emblazoned at the bottom.

Harris spent the weekend interviewing a half dozen potential running mates, 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’ selection process. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private campaign deliberations.

She is said to be making her decision imminently and has a slate of planned events with her running mate this week.

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.

He is skeptical Harris’ campaign will reach out before they officially make the pick.

“Hopefully (Harris’) people are a little more savvy than Clinton’s people were,” he said.

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.

But Eche does have a favorite among her prospective veeps.

“Walz is my favorite,” he said. “Of the people she is thinking about, Walz makes the most sense.”

He also owns 10 websites featuring Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s name and other Democrats, with an eye toward a possible 2028 presidential run.

Eche’s Walz website is now simply a blank chartreuse with the governor’s name in lower-case black letters, a callback to the artist Charli XCX labeling Harris “brat” in a tweet shortly after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, allowing the vice president to take on his operation.

That was his wife’s idea, he said. But the site links to his startup’s website — Communer, a site to buy and sell domains and trademarks — where he is offering the Harris slate for $15,000.

Eche supported Clinton in 2016, and he supports Harris this cycle. Yet his experience from 2016 — where his website turned into a pro-Trump site — doesn’t give him any pause in selling the Harris sites this time around.

“The Harris campaign has hundreds of millions of dollars, so if they don’t buy their own domain, that is kind of on them,” he said. “I’ve 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’t donating their billboards to the campaign. It is just a property basically.”

A Harris spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked whether the plan to buy the domains.