some people would have you believe that jon elrod, the republican candidate to replace julia carson in indiana's 7th district, is the best candidate on LGBT issues, based in part on the fact that he is publicly against a state amendment banning gay marriage.

but whether or not elrod is truly sympathetic to these issues, it appears that he associates with those who are decidedly not. lesser-known blogger tyrion has discovered that elrod's web site was designed by a firm with close ties to the notorious eric miller and his advance america organization:

Jon Elrod has muddied the waters by asking the anti-gay firm Main-1-Media to design his campaign website (As of January 22, 2008 the website was registered to Main-1-Media by Jack Straub, Main-1-Media's Chief Operating Officer). That would be this Main-1-Media:

Registering under Main1Media, Miller and his organization were seemingly able to fly beneath the proverbial radar regarding the nature of their assembly. When it was pointed out to a State House event planning employee that Main1Media represented Eric Miller, Advance America and an anti-gay agenda, the State House began making phone calls to find out why there might be controversy surrounding Main1Media and its rally - expected to bring 1,000 Miller followers to the State House rotunda.

You'll recall, Main-1-Media is owned by Rick Terry, an Eric Miller crony and the former Director of Development for Miller's organization (solid reporting, AI!), Advance America. Advance America is one of the primary promoters of the homophobic "marriage amendment" to the Indiana State Constitution. In support of that amendment, Miller used the Main-1-Media firm to register and organize a rally in support of the amendment at the Indiana Statehouse in 2005. In other words, Main-1-Media has been directly involved in anti-gay activism.

a whois search for jonelrod.com confirms that the domain is registered to main-1-media. in fact, until recently, elrod's site had a disclaimer at the bottom that the site was designed by main-1-media. that disclaimer is gone now, but here is a google cache of a page bearing the main-1-media disclaimer. there's also a rough draft of the site, complete with lorem ipsum, up on main-1-media's servers.

this revelation was buried in a post by tyrion criticizing blogger gary welsh of advance indiana for his often-baseless attacks on andré carson. gary's advance indiana blog should not be confused with eric miller's similarly-named advance america organization—if anything, advance indiana is dedicated to fighting advance america. so it's a tad ironic that if you google "rick terry" "advance america", the third link is to this old AI post documenting advance america's shady accounting practices. gary and eric miller might be committed political enemies, but they sure agree on a lot of issues, including support for jon elrod, it would seem. (gary has repeatedly refused to allow links to tyrion's blog entry to be posted at AI, even turning on comment moderation to prevent this uncomfortable truth about elrod from being posted.)

incidentally, main-1-media also designed the state's controversial "in god we trust" license plates, which they did at no charge. they just wanted to spread the word of god-trustin', i guess.

update: a reader notes that on jan 14, elrod's site was registered to d3 datasolutions (at least according to polis politics). so apparently the site's registration just switched to main-1-media in the past couple weeks. ¶

The most damning issue about Jon Elrod is his studious avoidance of any opinion whatsoever about George Bush's War in Iraq. Elrod calls himself a fiscal conservative but he is oblivious to its fiscal impact:
War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan [Congressional Budget] office wrote.

The human costs are incalculable... ¶

Thanks for the traffic, yo! Love your work. ¶

Look like a change was made to the record on January 16th. More complete Whois info from Go Daddy,w here it was registered:

Registrant:
Main-1-Media

7857 E. 88th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46256
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: JONELROD.COM
Created on: 16-Mar-06
Expires on: 16-Mar-10
Last Updated on: 16-Jan-08

Administrative Contact:
Straub, Jack jack@main1media.com
Main-1-Media
7857 E. 88th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46256
United States
3178417000 Fax -- 3178417007

Technical Contact:
Straub, Jack jack@main1media.com
Main-1-Media
7857 E. 88th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46256
United States
3178417000 Fax -- 3178417007

Domain servers in listed order:
NS43.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS44.DOMAINCONTROL.COM ¶

Wilson... I am not going to argue with you about whether or not the war is justified, but government spending on war DOES raise the GDP, so it's not as if war spending is bad for the economy. It's actually great for the economy. ¶

War is unhealthy for children and other living beings... ¶

Sean Shepard is the libertarian candidate running for Congress. He's sharp. He's also given countless hours to our city and state as a tax activist and worked very closely with us last summer. Sean was definitely a key player in the tax protest rallies.

Sean Shepard is the former state director (volunteer position) for the Fair Tax. He and I organized a FAIR TAX 101 educational forum and volunteer roundup in July that was covered on all 4 news networks in Indy.


Sean Shepard is anxious to debate both Carson and Elrod, however, neither of his challengers have mentioned a word about a debate, in as much as I've heard.

This is an important office. The candidates should debate the issues so the public can make an informed choice. The public is sick to death of elections being about money.

You've done terrific research to learn that Elrod's choice for website development is connected with Advance America. The taxpayers need to know this.

CHECK OUT SEAN SHEPARD:
http://shepard2008.com/ ¶

Please at least crop off the staff from this picture. I left a while back and I don't really enjoy having my picture on your blog. Thanks. ¶

sorry, i don't think i'm going to do that. this story is more than a year old, the photos are tiny, and your name (whoever you are) doesn't appear in the post. nobody is going to connect you with this story if they didn't already know you used to work there.

feel free to contact me by email if you want to press your case further. i won't divulge your identity if you do. ¶