Cut-n-Paste-gate

The WayneWho staff received an e-mail with what amounts to a very serious charge of possible plagiarism or at least some level of copyright infringement based on Mr. Hennecy's campaign website. It seems that the website for Mr. Byron Hennecy is pretty much a direct knock-off of the one for United States Senator, Gordon Smith (Rep) of Oregon. If you take a look at both websites http://byronhennecy.com/ and http://gordonsmith.com/ you will instantly see they are very similar to each other. These areas of similarity caused the WayneWho staff to dig a little bit deeper into who U.S. Senator Gordon Smith is, and why he would steal Mr. Hennecy's campaign website. A serious charge we know, but the truth must be uncovered.

The charge of plagiarism is no small one, and the WayneWho staff realized that if we were going to take on a sitting US Senator for stealing not only the look of Mr. Hennecy's campaign, but much of his wording as well, then we needed to investigate this Senator. Mr. Smith is a well respected Republican leader who was recently criticized for trying to tie himself to Senator Obama and his presidential bid to soften his Republican image. We figured this is where the idea must have come from to steal a once Republican turned Democrat local candidate's campaign message, so we sought out some smart people to help us find the evidence and solve this technology riddled case.

By bribing our grandchildren with a good amount of ice-cream we soon discovered amazing similarities in the web sites. As we looked at each page of information side by side, we could easily see the similarities:

From Byron Hennecy's 'About' Page:
Byron Hennecy has served his home state of Florida in the County since 1999 and the Fire Department since 2003. He has earned a reputation for independence and effectiveness, working with both Republicans and Democrats to do what is right for our County.

From Gordon Smith's 'About' Page:
Gordon Smith has served his home state of Oregon in the United States Senate since 1997. He has earned a reputation for independence and effectiveness, working with both Republicans and Democrats to do what is right for Oregon.

From Byron Hennecy's 'Roots' Page:
Thank you for your interest in Byron's GrassRoots. Over the next year, Byron's GrassRoots will be a highly visible and active part of Byron’s campaign that will involve people from across the county working together to elect Byron and benefit Democratic candidates throughout Florida. Our goal is to build Byron's GrassRoots into one of the largest grassroots campaign organizations in our county’s history and with your help we’ll reach that goal.

From Gordon Smith's 'SmithRoots' Page:
Thank you for your interest in SmithRoots. Over the next year, SmithRoots will be a highly visible and active part of Senator Smith’s campaign that will involve people from across the state working together to re-elect Senator Smith and benefit Republican candidates throughout Oregon. Our goal is to build SmithRoots into one of the largest grassroots campaign organizations in our state’s history and with your help we’ll reach that goal.

Even the first page promise of 'Cutting Taxes' read the exact same on both web sites: "Byron Hennecy believes you should keep as much of your hard-earned money as possible..."

We wanted more proof of the crime, so with a little urging and the promise of Happy Meals, the real truth was discovered. Technology people and grandchildren know how to read the code that makes up any website. Kids today are much like the characters in the movie the Matrix that can look at a screen filled with weird symbols and make sense of it. It is deep in this code where we found the truth. If you go to the page http://byronhennecy.com/about.aspx and then click on the 'View' menu button at the top of your internet explorer and then click on the 'Source' button on the list that appears (we recommend asking a younger person to help you). A new screen will appear that shows a bunch of strange signs. Ignore all of this. On the scroll bar on the right of this window, scroll down about half way. You will see a line that reads "Helping grow the Oregon economy is a top priority. As a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Gordon is using his clout to cut taxes and help working families keep more of their hard-earned money." You will also see a line that says "Gordon Smith is making public policy that does not leave Oregonians high and dry." Yep, we felt pretty stupid too. We did not expect to find Gordon Smith's campaign message hidden on Byron Hennecy's website. We would like to apologized to the Gordon Smith Campaign for thinking they were the ones who had copied a website.

At this point we had to wonder if all the "Green Building" messages Mr. Hennecy had been writing about were his own ideas or if they were somebody else'. Maybe this wasn't Mr. Hennecy's fault, but that of his campaign staff, or his campaign consultant Shawn Van Dusen of Fortis Management Group who had also worked on the campaign of St Cloud City Council Member Tom Griffin. Mr. Van Dusen has been writing lengthy essays for St. Cloud in The News to educate all of us on his theories of economic development. Or maybe the consultant running the campaign is really the campaign itself with Mr. Hennecy being the willing puppet who will do anything or say anything to get elected? The scary part about politicians is that in the absence of the consultants used during a campaign, special interests become the voice of truth after the election is over.

We understand that the problems we face in this community are dire, but the fake-it-till-you-make-it mentality has been an ongoing problem with Osceola County politicians. Candidates should also learn to trust the voters of this community. Voters of this community, when told the truth, are capable of making the right decisions. Lying to the voters is what messes up the whole process.

For now we will leave you with a quick note that we have e-mailed the Gordon Smith Campaign and our local media sources with all of the original material we were sent. We cannot take credit for these findings and offer our thanks to those who keep us informed and on track. I guess we will just have to wait for any type of response from the affected campaigns.