Carl “Two Feathers” Whittaker is running for Governor as a Republican. I wish him the best in his campaign, but from what I see in the media and around the blogosphere, he’s being considered as a second-class candidate, along with a list of others.

Since Rep. Beth Harwell announced her decision not to run for Governor (and since even before that, really), there has been plenty of speculation, far and wide, about big names that might sign up, what the Tennessee GOP’s strategy might be, and how this all could play out for Democrats.

Meanwhile, there are four Republicans battling it out in the Senate primary. Ed Bryant, of course, has suggested two of his opponents for consideration. Judging from Jeff Ward’s take on Bryant’s campaign not having state-wide appeal, it’s difficult to say whether Van Hillary’s supporters might say the same thing about Bryant. Still, there is a clear push from all sides of the Senate primary that someone should step up to the plate and take on Phil Bredesen.

I thought I’d go ahead and add my two cents on that one, and what better way to do that than to consult a WHOIS engine, to see if any of the current Senate candidates have the governor’s race in mind.

But first, I’d like to point out that harwellforgovernor.com was registered on September 23, 2005, by Mike Kopp of Nashville, and the domain is reserved for one year from that date. According to a Google search,

Mike Kopp is Senior Vice President of MMA Creative, Inc. Mike was deputy Commissionsioner of The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development under Governor Phil Bredesen. He has been press secretary to Al Gore.

Interesting. But back to the Senate candidates:

Both bryantforgovernor.com and edbryantforgovernor.com are unclaimed.

Hillearyforgovernor.com and vanhillearyforgovernor.com are unclaimed.

Moderforgovernor.com and jeffmoderforgovernor.com are unclaimed.

But it turns out Bob Corker is, in fact, interested in the possibility of running for Governor of Tennessee. His people have reserved both corkerforgovernor.com and bobcorkerforgovernor.com. Both domains were registed by Michael Compton of Chattanooga, who was chief-of-staff while Corker was mayor. They were both registered on July 20, 2004, and are paid through the same date in 2007.

The two Corker for Governor domains were registered on the same day, and by the same person, as Corker’s Senate campaign website.

Bobcorkerforpresident.com is still available.

UPDATE: Jay Bush has picked up this post, and the importance of my research is being challenged by an anonymous reader in the comments:

Why is that interesting? Not uncommon for politicians to register domains for a variety of offices. Would be willing to bet half the GOP state senators in Tennessee have registered domains with their name for governor or congress, and suspect that most of the congressional delegation has done the same for other higher offices.

Easy money. Of the 17 Senators in the Republican caucus, only five were flagged by matches.

For this challenge, I adopted the same method I used for the U.S. Senate candidates above. I did a WHOIS search for each Republican in the Tennessee Senate, looking at possible domain names for each.

The only difference here is that I was looking for potential matches to both Governor and Congress domain names, so there were four possible hits for each of the 17 Senators:

1. FirstnameLastnameForGovernor
2. LastnameForGovernor
3. FirstnameLastnameForCongress
4. LastnameForCongress

Of the 68 possible matches, there were only nine domains taken. Of these nine, all but two were registered by people out of state (NJ, FL, VA, LA - twice, MT and TX).

The remaining two are blocked, private registrations, so those are the only true, possible matches.

These were millerforgovernor.com and williamsforcongress.com.

In other words, the only two possible matches are registered for two of the most common names in the Tennessee Senate.

I’ll accept cash or Best Buy gift certificates, Anonymous.

In short, what this shows is that Corker’s actions are an aberration. Thus it could be inferred that Bob Corker’s political ambitions are more general than any of his opponents in the Senate primary, as well as an overwhelming majority of Republican leaders in Tennessee.

UPDATE II. Make that just one possible match. It turns out that in all of this research, I neglected to actually plug the remaining two domains into a browser ; williamsforcongress.com touts a Democrat in Illinois. That leaves us with millerforgovernor.com.

UPDATE III. Here’s a full account of the nine domains flagged under five name matches: David Fowler, Jeff Miller, Mark Norris, Jim Tracy, and Michael Williams.

1. fowlerforcongress.com - registered by Jonathan Kurpis of I.D.E.A.S., Inc. in New Jersey
2. millerforgovernor.com - unknown registrant
3. jeffmillerforcongress.com - a candidate in Pensacola, Florida
4. millerforcongress.com - registered by Friends to Elect Jeff Miller in Herndon, Virginia
5. norrisforcongress.com - registered by NOLDC, Inc. in New Orleans, Louisiana
6. tracyforgovernor.com - registered by NOLDC, Inc. in New Orleans, Louisiana
7. tracyforcongress.com - registered by Tracy Velazquez in Bozeman, Montana
8. williamsforgovernor.com - registered by Scott Haywood of Austin, Texas
9. williamsforcongress.com - a Democratic candidate in Illinois

Of these, I deem only #2 a potential match, as I’ve said.