Anika Begay
Jeremy Green Eche of Brooklyn holds the Harris-Walz domain name, along with several other hypothetical tickets. He describes himself as “the best political cybersquatter ever.”
By Jeremy Green
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By Jeremy Green
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When Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Tuesday that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would be her running mate, the website HarrisWalz.com had already been taken down.
In fact, it was snatched up four years ago, and not by either candidate, but by a politically forward-thinking millennial from Brooklyn.
Jeremy Green Eche, 36, is a trademark attorney who also runs an online marketplace where people can buy and sell trademarks and domains. He is probably best known as a domain investor.
“I also loosely call myself a domain squatter or a cybersquatter,” he says. “It’s a derogatory term, but I don’t mind using it because it’s still accurate.”
A couple of times a year, Eche goes on a “buying spree” on sites like GoDaddy and Name.com, buying up domain names for all sorts of hypothetical presidential candidates.
In August 2020, anticipating Harris might run again in the future, he purchased 15 Harris-related domain names, combined with “every type of popular white guy I could think of who was important at the time.” They included Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and, of course, Walz.
Much of it is guesswork, though Eche keeps abreast of politics (he’s a member of the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America) and attributes his talent for spotting rising political stars to his college job as an autograph dealer.
“There’s probably four or five other people doing it that I don’t know,” he says of cybersquatting. “I just think it’s really fun to register a domain and then have this kind of payoff where I just hit the jackpot and I get a little news cycle and it’s just a cool moment for me.”
He’s done it well before
Eche pays about $10 to register each domain and renews them annually in the hope of eventually striking gold.
And he did so in 2016, as the owner of ClintonKaine.com, when then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton picked Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. He also claimed ClintonBooker.com, predicting a ticket with New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and ClintonBiden.com if Joe Biden were his running mate.
Eche, who went by Jeremy Peter Green before getting married, told NPR’s Morning Edition at the time that he lived in a basement and had no credit card debt, and hoped to sell the domain for at least $10,000. But the Clinton campaign offered only $2,000.
He claims to have sold the site for $15,000 to another anonymous buyer, who turned out to be the Trump campaign. They used the website to post anti-Clinton stories during the election.
“Honestly, in 2016, I was really bummed when the Clinton campaign didn’t even make me a serious offer,” he said Tuesday. “I hope that the people on the Harris campaign are maybe a little more savvy, a little more in the know, especially now that they’ve seen what happened last time.”
Eche hopes that Harris’s campaign will buy the site for the same $15,000 price, adding, “When you factor in inflation, that’s a really good deal.”
Harris’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
And he says he’s glad Harris chose Walz, both for political and personal reasons. Among them, he feels he’s finally qualified to call himself “the best political cybersquatter ever.”
“I feel a bit like someone who went to the Olympics eight years ago and did well and then failed to win in Tokyo and then came back and won a gold medal again,” Eche said. “I feel like the GOAT of this very small cybersquatting niche.”
While Eche had been keeping tabs on the potential Harris-Walz dominance for years, he surely couldn’t have predicted the twists and turns this election cycle would take: from President Biden running for a second term and then dropping out, to the Democratic Party coalescing around Harris as their nominee and her choice of Walz from a crowded field of contenders.
In fact, Eche says he barely had time to prepare. In 2016, he embellished ClintonKaine.com with homemade comics and fan fiction, to give people something to look at. This time, he had just enough time to create a single meme, at his wife’s suggestion.
Harris-Walz’s website has the now-familiar green background and all lowercase “walz,” mirroring the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s widely memed album “Brat.” Harris-Pritzker’s site looks the same, just with “prit.” Clicking through those two pages takes users to Eche’s online marketplace, with a list of other fictional Harris domains and the option to purchase HarrisWalz.com.
“Not only are these domains valuable for the 2024 election, they will also hold their value in 2028 if Harris runs that year,” it reads. “This makes them an excellent investment.”
He’s already looking beyond November
Eche also looks ahead a few years.
He has 10 different domains for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who many expect to run in the future. Her possible running mates include Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth. He’s offering them at $3,400 each.
He’s also buying back the Clinton-Kaine domain name, partly for its “sentimental value,” from the person who bought it after the Trump campaign let it expire. He also deals in Republican domain names and says his best this year was TrumpCotton.com (until Trump chose Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, of course).
Eche, who does not rule out any political possibility, says he also wants to keep some domains for a potential candidacy led by Walz, should he one day run for president.
“Though, honestly, I don’t have enough,” he says. “I should buy some before this story comes out.”
