How to attack your gubernatorial opponent? If you’re doing things Texas-style, you juice your search engine rankings with your opponent’s name attached a certain homosexual search term. At least that’s how Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is taking on sitting Gov. Rick Perry.
Hutchison’s website employed metadata — non-visible HTML code used by search engines — that honed in on the search phrase “rick perry gay.” On Queerty, we use metadata like “gay blog” and “gay news” to, uh, help search engines point visitors in our direction when searching for those terms.
Obviously, Hutchison’s team wanted folks who were checking up on the latest in Perry’s sexuality (rumors that he’s gay have circulated for years) to end up on her campaign website, StandByKay.com. The senator’s camp has since pulled the keywords from the site, blaming auto-generating software for the incident.
Intentional or not, thus far the strategy isn’t working: A Google search for “rick perry gay” now turns up websites reporting about Hutchison’s tactics. And this. Oops.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Cam
The stories of her treatment of her staff are legion on Capitol Hill. Most offices wouldn’t hire people who were looking for another Hill job without at least a year of Hill experience, UNLESS they worked for Hutchison. If they survuved more than a few months in their office they said that that was equivilant to a year anywhere else. She is a true nightmare of a person.
Matt
On the one hand, if there are 22,000 hidden phrases in Hutchison’s web site’s metadata, there is no way that the candidate herself specifically approved each one of them. I would guess that “gay” was automatically generated to catch google searches that misspell “Kay” — as in “Kay Bailey Hutchison.” She is a moderate and I doubt she would intentionally resort to dirty tricks.
That said, this is Texas, and of course Karl Rove intentionally spread the rumor that Ann Richards was a lesbian to elect George W. Bush in 1994. So if it worked for Bush…
Andrew
@Matt:
Nah. My partner is a web designer/developer and that doesn’t fly. Can’t expect her to review every metatag, but “rick perry gay” is not an example of a “re-direct tag” for bad spelling. She’s a shark and it’s well-known on the Hill. She has resorted to dirty tricks in the past and I bet behind closed doors she’d approve of the tags. We’ll never know…
Who Cares
Despicable subject matter aside, who cares about Rick Perry!
This a-hole embarrasses himself every time he opens his mouth. He continuously stands on his Texas soapbox shouting that Texas should secede from the rest of the nation and form its own government then holds his hands out for help from the government when they need help.
D-Sun
Can we just give Texas back to Mexico and call it a day?
Alexa
My friend in Texas would taken her over Perry any day. She may be a bitch to work for, but she’s not a crazy nutjob like Perry. Shame it backfired.
Donald
I wonder how many people remember that she was the other woman in an affair with the man that is now her husband? He left his wife and 3 or 4 kids to be with her. True Christian values.
Being a Texan, D-Sun, bite me. *g* We’re trying to make changes but there are too many backwoods rednecks and blue haired grannys down here to make good liberal progress. I miss Ann Richards and Molly Ivens. I’m just hoping that these 2 (Hutchinson and Perry) will disgust the Republican base and a Democrat will sneak in.
Steve H
Donald, I don’t believe it’s possible to disgust the Republican base. If Bush/Cheney/Rove didn’t do it, and the raft of holier-than-thou adulterers getting caught can’t do it, what could? At this point, if Satan and Stalin were to run on a joint ticket but proclaim themselves capital-R Republicans, they’d probably get the party’s endorsement.
Mike
Well they are both bottom feeders. I will be voting for the Democrat. Even Mickey Mouse would serve The Great State of Texas better. I have written many times to KBH to express my concerns and never received a response…not even a form letter to acknowledge my concerns. Now RP, this clown was appointed by GWB and uninformed people kept him in. I hope his true colors have changed the hearts and minds of my fellow Texans. It’s time for RP to “hitch the trailer” as it were. I still can’t believe his stance on Unemployment when so many of my friends (hard working friends) are without jobs that pay the bills. Never in my life would I imagine rejecting funds, and asking for donations to rebuild the Governor’s Mansion and accept funds from the Government to do so after a fire. Where is the fire insurance Mr. Govenor? VOTE DEMOCRAT.
petted
@Matt: Hutchinson a moderate?!!? Hell would freeze over first – I live in Texas believe me I know she ain’t no moderate. That said I’m going to enjoy seeing the shit hit the fan as they both have reputations for using underhanded tactics.
@Mike: I’ve written her before too – I did get responses but they were a lot of bull. What irks me is the house Perry’s billing taxpayers for while he’s not been staying at the governor’s mansion does it really need to be over an hour from downtown in light traffic?
Forrest
Not a Texan here but would have to go with the lesser of two evils=Hutchison.
Remember Perry’s gem of a quote to the NYT Mag’s Deborah Solomon “Questions” ?
Rick regarding the word “homosexuality”, ” If it’s not about sex why don’t they call it something else”?
Truly priceless, no?
Helga von ornstein
Wait a minute. Wait a minue. How does this sound? Why not do the same search on her?
After all, what do we “REALLY” know about ol’ sister Hutchison? I sure hope she fails just as miserably as ol’ sister Liddy Dole.
These wanna be sanctimonious frauds are sickening.
Joanaroo
Hi Donald! I agree ! I loved Ann and Molly-both gone too soon! I love your comment ton Steven H.! It’s great to see these 2 right-wing kooks eat their own!
Joanaroo
I’m sorry! Just caught that now – I mean Steve H. The eyes are going, the spelling, the memory…:-/ Funny thing about KBH – she tries to come off as an innocent lady, but is more like a holy terror!
M Shane
The ridiculous paradox about Rebulican politics is that it is basically the party of and for the Corporate wealthy of whose ethics little can be said except that anything goes as long as you get away with it: Business 101. I have been around Right Wing people enough to know that theatrics like those of ENRON are the order of the day. As it was commonly said at the time “the only difference with them is that they got caught”. Texans are about as right wing as they come, it’s a country of oil barons cattlemen and business crooks of all shades. We are lacydasical in this country any more about literally anything to the point where it is almost hopeless.That American’s reelected Bush/Cheney is so disgusting when they came a hairs breadth from destroying this democracy completely is proof of the fact.
Tony Kushner , the playwrite wrote something to the effect that ” what were Liberals are now called Radicals, what were Radicals, are thought insane,what was Reactionary is now Moderate, and what was Insane is now sound Conservative thinking.
Professional web designors simply don’t make that kind of error. It’s too potentially damaging not to check things like that. I was trained to write web pages and it just is not something that would happen erroneously.
People have gotten so used to crookedness that they just let it slide.
threshold
I’ll still be voting for Hutchison in the primary, mostly because I despise some of Perry’s antigay remarks. And other idiocy coming out of his camp.
Dan
@D-Sun: Yes we can if we can also give the rest of the country back to the native americans.
According to the last ballot I filled out Kay Bailey Hutchison is a Democrat. Look it up!
dellisonly
BTW forget them both and vote for Kinky Freedman.
TANK
@Dan:
Then that ballot had a misprint. She’s a republican.
Xtabentun
“Can we just give Texas back to Mexico and call it a day?”
It’s not *your* Texas. I think that’s left up to Texans. I don’t think earlier Texans asked for permission before lighting up the cannons against the Mexican army.
“Not a Texan here but would have to go with the lesser of two evils=Hutchison.”
Hutchinson is probably much worse, to be honest. She has this public persona of a charming, howdy, everyday woman but living in Austin you hear a lot about what it’s like to actually work for her. Rumors of carpet-chewing tantrums, bullying and authoritarian behavior. And her politics is pure reactionary conservatism. The sad thing is — she’ll probably win because most of the public is sick of Rick Perry.
“BTW forget them both and vote for Kinky Freedman.”
Please don’t. He’s a has-been entertainer, drama queen, narcissist and a cigar-chomping wannabe caudillo. He’s entirely unserious about politics and is mainly in it for his own ego and to sell books. I wish I could tell you who to vote for but my state is such a banana republic and a political basket case that I can’t.
Xtabentun
As an aside, I refuse to vote in this state out of principle. If you want to hold statewide public office you better be damn sure you’re there to represent the interest of business because that’s who runs this place. It’s a low tax, good for business place, and the moral standard is set by a corrupt and sinister religious elite. If voting changed anything here the caudillos and machismo cowboys in charge would have outlawed it. The Democrats are no better.
NewYorkness
I can see the headlines now: GAY vs KAY
B.
Andrew wrote, “Nah. My partner is a web designer/developer and that doesn’t fly. Can’t expect her to review every metatag, but “rick perry gay” is not an example of a “re-direct tag” for bad spelling. She’s a shark and it’s well-known on the Hill. She has resorted to dirty tricks in the past and I bet behind closed doors she’d approve of the tags. We’ll never know.”
My guess is that she didn’t know and instead merely told her web site designer to “do whatever it takes.” That assessment is mostly because politicians are so busy in an election campaign trying to raise money that they just wouldn’t have time to be bothered with details on how a web site works.
She may be a shark as Andrew says, but while real sharks are attracted to blood, political sharks are attracted to money as their highest priority.
Alex
I was just looking for info on the character from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. These internets are so confusing.
Trey Sesame
I had a threesome with her and billy bob thorton once in the back of a barn underneath a couple of horses….she has a big “CLIT”
Joe Mustich, Justice of the Peace
@D-Sun: Yes indeed.
me
he is so fine. i wish he really were gay