Ian Murphy creates site satirizing Corwin's NY-26 campaign

Ian Murphy, on the Green line in the NY-26 special election on May 24, may be considered such a long shot that the Buffalo News won't even mention him as a candidate in the race, but that's hardly keeping him silent.

As a long-time blogger at Buffalo Beast, Murphy has learned a thing or two about the Web, social media and PhotoShop.

Murphy has raised so little money for his campaign, he hasn't even needed to file campaign financing reports, but it doesn't take much cash to launch a Web site.

So Murphy is campaigning against the frontrunners in the race the best way he knows how -- with satire and digital media.

Within the last day or so, Murphy launched JaneCorwin.org.

The site is a direct copy of Corwin's own campaign site, JaneCorwin.com, but alter's text and photos to send a decidedly different message.

On the authentic site, where Corwin invites people to sign up for an e-mail newsletter, Murphy changed the submission fields from e-mail address and zip code to "Bank Account Number" and "SS #."  Where Corwin has a "Contribute" button, Murphy's button reads, "Give Me Your Money."

One blog post entry is titled "Corwin Outlines Comprehensive Pandering Strategy." The post begins: "Jane Corwin, successful daughter of rich people and candidate for New York’s 26th Congressional District, today outlined a comprehensive pandering strategy to say she’ll decrease gas prices because that’s what our polling research said people want to hear. Corwin discussed her pandering agenda to a crowd of local idiots."

The humor isn't always polite. Murphy also calls Corwin "ugly."

The disclosure on the footer of the site reads, "paid for by corporate greed."

Some of the links on the site lead to a page asking people to make contributions to Murphy's campaign.

Asked about the site, Murphy wrote back:

We set it up as a favor to Jane. Her current Web site doesn't accurately portray her vapidity, her corporate agenda, or her desire to decimate Medicare and Social Security for the financial benefit of the Wall Street elite. We just thought she deserved a more honest Web site.

We also asked Corwin's campaign for a response and this is what we received from Matthew Harakal:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Now if we could only get liberals and career politicians like Kathy Hochul to follow Jane Corwin’s lead to reduce taxes, cut spending and create jobs, we could really start to fix Western New York’s economy.