The techniques are less important than the target, but the infighting is amusing all the while.

When it comes to campaigning, collecting donations, and earning key voter support there is little a candidate will not do within legal boundaries (and frequently super legal as well.) Kamala Harris has her team already in high gear and they have been ready for the arrival of Beto O’Rourke.

All week the Man from El Paso had been vacillating on whether he would run, and the recently-admitted white man had lined up a full scale media love fest. Meanwhile, California Kammy was lying in wait. She had her digital team drawing up some cagey, albeit familiar, techniques to draw some of the interest in Beto away, and possibly build up her own email lists.

On Twitter Logan Thompson discovered some cagey moves by the Harris campaign to siphon off voter interest and possibly drive eyes to her landing pages. Initially when typing in “Beto for America” as a search term on Google one of the results was in fact a Kamala Harris campaign page.

https://twitter.com/LoganDobson/status/1106277922208473093

(This currently is not a delivered result, which may indicate the Harris campaign paid for a high return slot through Google, which expires after a number of click-through returns.)

Not just content to draw clicks, they also masked her landing page to resemble Beto’s campaign colors of black. Harris, since her announcement, has mostly adopted a goldenrod color for many of her campaign graphics. Note the header image above, which reflects many of Kamala’s graphics to date. Now look at the page offered for the “Beto” search terms.

This was a subtle, but not at all unintentional feint on the part of the Harris team.

Note too, as Dobson pointed out, that in that capture page Harris’ web team even has Beto’s name wrapped into the url. (empasis added)

[ “https://action.kamalaharris.org/ …sign/kdh_190312_general_search/?source=ads_search_190306_%2Bbeto%20%2Bamerica_ad1_337814897414&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj9ifyK-C4QIVTFmGCh1omQFwEAAYAiAAEgIA0fD_BwE” ]

Credit where it is due, there is some dilligence on the part of the Harris team.

https://twitter.com/LoganDobson/status/1106280227204972549

Again, much of this is commonplace these days in the digital campaign area. The fact that the Harris team had this at the ready and were able to employ it as soon as he made the announcement official is a sign of two things: They are already primed and serious about the severity of the campaign, and they view Beto as either a serious contender, or at least one who will be competing for some of the same demographics among the potential voters.

At either rate (or both) some of these Democrats are playing for keeps at a very early stage.