Memo to politicians and prospective politicians: Don’t let a domain registration expire unless you’re 100% sure you’re not going to use it again. Even then, make sure you’re not linking to it anymore. Salt Lake County Councilman Dave Alvord learned that lesson the hard way.
When Alvord was South Jordan Mayor, he had the website lowerSJtaxes.com. As of Wednesday morning, Alvord was still linking to the site through his Twitter page.
Header for Salt Lake County Councilman Dave Alvord's Twitter account.
But, when you click the link, the page that comes up is probably not what you or Alvord expected.
Screengrab from lowersjtaxes.com.
The site features a screenshot of a post from Alvord’s Facebook page (which has since been removed) that caused an uproar last March. Salt Lake County leaders condemned Alvord’s post.
Alvord had apologized and thought the matter was settled.
”It’s sad that someone wants to harass me for a post I apologized for a year ago,” Alvord said.
For several years, the site lay fallow after Alvord used it during his first run for South Jordan Mayor in 2014. He let the domain registration expire but did not remove existing links.
Sawyer Pangborn noticed the lapsed registration and snapped it up on Feb. 1.
“I don’t particularly care for a lot of what Dave Alvord stands for and decided I’d do it without drawing a ton of attention to it. My plan is to document most of the reprehensible things he has to say. At one point, I just redirected it to the Trib article about the comments that are there currently,” Pangborn said.
Alvord removed the link from his Twitter bio shortly after becoming aware of the repurposed URL.
