Ted Cruz 2016? Try 2032
Please welcome the president of the future.
With Tuesday's addition of Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential field for 2016 seems to be shaping up. But speculators have been busy for years trying to guess which candidates will be throwing their hats into the ring for 2020 and even into the 2030s.
Web domains have been purchased for all of the major Republican candidates who have declared their intention to run for president in 2016, and the equivalent sites for 2020. Speculators have gone so far as to hope that tedcruz2032.com will pay off as a web investment.
Some have been at the expense of the candidate themselves—see the now-infamous carlyfiorina.org, which was purchased in December 2014 to blast Fiorina's record as CEO of Hewlett Packard. And Rick Santorum has long been plagued by santorum.com.
"They're the modern-day real estate," said Amichaim Abramson, an entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, New York, who bought a number of domains for future elections across the political spectrum. He said he hopes to help candidates he supports or keep domains out of the hands of those he doesn't like, but he's not looking to make money on the deal.
His sites, including corybooker2024.com and tedcruz2024.com, may seem far flung to a few naysayers, but Abramson pointed that Ronald Reagan was re-elected president when he was 73.
"I bought the sites because these are people with aspiration," he said. "I don't know what my politics will be in eight years."
Other domain speculators want to help promote their candidate.
David Bellow, a Texas small business owner and former conservative blogger, bought a number of Ted Cruz-related domains in the hopes of promoting the candidate he saw elected to Senate and hoped would have bigger aspirations.
"I didn't buy them with the intention of selling them," Bellow said. "I just really liked him and believed in him."