Kentucky fried campaign cut-and-paste

One of the blessings of the computer age is the cut-and-paste function. Unfortunately, this blessing can be a curse for lazy people and cheaters when they get caught.

And in Kentucky, two Democratic gubernatorial campaigns got caught.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Portions of a "Blueprint for Change" mailed to 200,000 Kentuckians last week by the gubernatorial campaign of Bruce Lunsford are worded similarly to the 2006 platform of unsuccessful Florida Democratic nominee for governor Jim Davis.

Also, the language in an energy plan pushed by Steve Beshear resembles that of Chet Culver, a Democrat elected governor of Iowa last year.

Both the Lunsford and Beshear campaigns acknowledged yesterday they had used language pulled from the Web sites of the out-of-state campaigns, but they said it was not plagiarism.

"We just took some stock language from it and applied it to Kentucky," said Adam Bozzi, press secretary for Lunsford. Beshear's campaign manager, Jim Cauley, said the campaign saw Culver's plan for energy online "and we liked it."

I visited both web sites of the cut-and-pasters, and fortunately for them, neither is talking up "new ideas."

Technorati tags: Kentucky politics news Democrats Elections plagiarism