There’s a lot of things to say about Ted Cruz and his decision to be the first candidate from either party to officially declare that they are seeking the Presidency in 2016. And over at Texas Monthly’s BurkaBlog, Erica Grieder and R.G. Ratcliffe have said many of them. Here at the Daily Post, though, we’re wondering something else: What address is the guy going to use for his official campaign website? 

Right now, many of the obvious choices aren’t available to him. TedCruz.com, for example, is not owned by the candidate. Indeed, it belongs to someone who’s fairly clearly trolling the Senator, with a stark “tombstone”-style page that simply says “Support President Obama” and “Immigration Reform Now!” It’s the same story over at TedCruzForAmerica.com, where the troll job even more hilariously redirects to Healthcare.gov, the website for the Affordable Care Act that Cruz has vowed to see overturned. 

Other sites that would make sense for Cruz’s campaign are claimed, too. TedCruz2016.com currently houses a temporary page of slideshow photography. The site’s title is “Ted Cruz for President | Coming Soon,” but the WhoIs data on the site points to Troy Kadavy, of the Nebraska-based digital marketing service 92 West. We asked Kadavy about the registration, who explained via email that one of his firm’s clients requested that he purchase the domain on his behalf. “The client is not affiliated with Ted Cruz or his camp, but would be willing to give the campaign the domain in exchange for an in-person meeting with the Senator,” Kadavy said. 

If the candidate doesn’t want to have to hang out with somebody in Nebraska (whose primary isn’t until May), his options are limited. Going further down the list, the prospects for the Senator to have a prominent campaign website remain slim: TedCruzGOP.com is taken; TedCruzForPresident.com is out, too; TedCruzIn2016.com is booked; TedCruzForUSA.com, same; even presumptuous-but-enticing options like PresidentCruz.com are already owned. 

Dropping the “Ted” from his name doesn’t help much, either: The dot-coms for CruzForPresident, Cruz2016, and CruzForAmerica are all similarly booked. 

In short, if Senator Cruz wants his campaign website to carry a certain amount of panache, he’s going to have to get creative. Citizens trolling politicians by securing likely campaign websites is a tradition that dates back roughly as far as the World Wide Web: The last Texas politician to ascend to the Presidency, of course, had a famous parody site at GWBush.com, and websites ranging from ObamaForPresident.com to Hillary2016.com are currently being squatted on. (The tech-savvy Obama team did buy Obama.com and BarackObama.com, though.) And in 2004, bail bondsman Kerry Edwards sought a six-figure payday from the Democratic nominee and his running mate for the website he’d owned built around his own name.

For Cruz, meanwhile, he’s got some deciding to do. He could opt to rebrand himself (Teddy2016.com is taken, and it’d be a cuddly option to smooth out some low favorability ratings), he could go to Nebraska, or he could look outside the “[lastname] for America/President/in [year]” box. How about CruzingToThePresidency.com? For the moment, that one’s still available.

Update: After this post went live, the owner of TedCruz2016.com apparently took pity on the Senator and his website woes and has amended his offer: “Our client is now offering the domain to the Cruz camp without conditions if they would like to use / have it transferred to their web manager,” a representative from Kadavy at 92 West wrote in an email this evening. Interested US Senators/GOP presidential candidates named Ted Cruz may contact Kadavy at 92 West. 

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)