Does Colleen Callahan have a campaign Website yet? Anyone who’s looking for one might stumble across this one: CallahanforCongress.com.
Methinks it’s NOT her site. Except for the disclaimer “Copyright. Callahanforcongress. All rights reserved” and a link to GoDaddy.com, the only content is a picture of a cute little girl (emma.jpg) wearing a shirt with a “Callahan for Congress” decal, complete with a red-white-and-blue Democratic donkey. With a red slash drawn through it. Like in “Democrats prohibited.”
Like I said, PROBABLY not the site of someone who is running as a Democrat.
There’s a debate going on in the comments section of this post. Someone accused the Aaron Schock camp of creating the site. One of my readers posted the WHOIS information for callahanforcongress.com stating that the owner of the site is John Callahan of State College, PA.
I did a Google search. There is a John Callahan with that telephone number. But there’s no news articles anywhere about a guy with that name from that city who’s running or thinking of running for Congress.
The mayor of Bethlehem, PA, is also named John Callahan. He might conceivably be interested in running for Congress, but one would think he would have an address in Bethlehem. And as a Democrat, I doubt he’d post a pic of anyone wearing a slashed-out Democratic Party symbol.
The site was registered on Jan. 17. I and other media broke the story that she was running on Jan. 24, but it was common knowledge amongst the political illuminati for a some time before then. So it’c conceivable someone in the Schock campaign or someone who wanted to help decided to throw together a placeholder Web site in a dastardly plot to deny Colleen a simple and easy-to-remember domain name for her campaign. And with the fast financial resources at their disposal, they found some dude in State College to be their willing thrall.
Yeah. It’s possible. Seems an awful lot of trouble to go through when colleenforcongress.com is still available. As is vote4callahan.com.
A quick phone call tomorrow will clear up the confusion. I hope. “Cause I don’t want to spend the next eight months debating silly crap like this.
UPDATE: Left a voicemail message at 11 a.m.
UPDATE: Courtesy of Dave Dahl, I now have two links for Colleen Callahan campaign: Citizens for Callahan and Colleen Callahan for Congress. I’ll look ‘em over and pass judgment later today. It looks like the nefarious scheme to deprive her of a campaign website has failed
Tags: Aaron Schock, campaign, Colleen Callahan, Congress, John Callahan
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
According to this site, in a post from 12/7/2007:
Also, Sam Bennett’s daughter’s name: Emma.
Sorry, but the idea that anyone would assume this is an Aaron Schock Production is just lame.
Billy, remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf? I don’t remember the outcome but I don’t think it was good
Hey, I’m NOT the one who cried wolf here.
Why would the mayor of Bethlehem live in State College, 182 miles away?
The area code for Bethlehem is 610. Google shows three John Callahan’s in Bethlehem. One of them is the mayor, apparently, and until 2010.
But the area code on the other post about the website registration is 814, and the address listed is State College.
Is the Citizens for Callahan site set up to accept donations for the congressional run or are the donations going to feed those two ginormous dogs?
I have just left voice mails at three different numbers listed for “John Callahan”…two in Bethlehem and one in State College. A fourth listing, a John R. Callahan, was not included in my calls because the mayor of Bethlehem is listed as John B. Callahan.
We’ll see if anyone calls me back from Pennsylvania. Something’s fishy either way, and this story needs to stay on top of your blog, Billy.
I too think something is fishy. Were I a resident of Bethlehem or State College, PA, I would be all over this story. However, I think we can put to bed the idea that Aaron Schock’s people are behind this site.
Mr. Callahan’s phone…the Mayor of Bethlehem’s home phone, known because I searched it by his wife’s name…now has a full mailbox and will not accept any more messages.
Further quick info about Mayor Callahan: I thought maybe he graduated from Penn State, hence the connection to State College, PA, but he instead graduated from a small private University in Bethlehem. It doesn’t appear that this man has ever done ANYTHING outside of Bethlehem, PA, so again…why would he register a website to an address in State College?
I think you should still leave the covers pulled back on that bed a little bit, Billy, before you go tuckin’ ‘em away.
BJ: You are missing something. There IS a man who lives in State College by that name. I found a Linkedin.com profile. He’s a pharmacologist, I believe.
Seriously, what ARE you guys smoking?
Billy, yes, I KNOW there is a man in State College by that name…I left a message at his house for him to call me.
He’s obviously not the Mayor of Bethlehem, and I’m betting the pharmacologist of the same name but 182 miles away is not running for congress.
The point? I’m trying to help you prove that Schock’s people DIDN’T do the site, but so far I have no proof of that. Until we have proof that someone named John Callahan…mayor or pharmacologist…is considering a run for congress in Pennsylvania, the door must be left open to the possibility of some funny business eminating right here in Illinois.
I just really can’t see Schock getting all that hung up on a domain name for Coleen Callahan.
Of course you can’t…you’re voting for him.
[...] am so intrigued by the “callahanforcongress” website, and the subsequent questions about it’s authenticity, that I can’t let it [...]
Im not voting for him and I can rest everyones mind here…just before I began to search for domain names for Colleen, I of course wanted her to have CallahanForCongress. But as you can all see, it was taken by the man above. At the time, that domain had different information up…for a real political congressman. After some time passed, it just showed that little girl. To me it just looked like his site got messed up and someone needs to fix it.
As far as Colleen, because she was behind in the race, they needed her to quickly get up a site so people could donate and in the rush of things, I found her two domains that she could use… CitizensforCallahan.com and FriendsOfCallahan.com I bought them both and provided a basic website for the citizensforcallahan. Just as fast as that had come, they quickly needed her to get an actual Congress site going. I could only get the ColleenCallahanForCongress.com and colleencallahan4congress.com . We went with the longer one. As Im working with the citizensforcallahan, another web developing company wanted to help with the main congress site, so they quickly put their heads together and got that up, which will hopefully be bigger soon. Soooo, long story short, now you know all the juicy details behind all this. If you see inconsistancies, please keep in mind…Colleen is way behind in the race and having to work quickly to catch up. People are trying to help her out the best they can. Im sure eventually I’ll be taken down the CitizensForCallahan site as it now doesnt match the main site and will no longer be needed. I’ve taken the donation button out of it and it now just links to the congress site.