"I hit the roof," said Kathie Summers, campaign manager for Vermont gubernatorial candidate Ruth Dwyer. Last week, Summers took a call from a supporter who tried to access the Dwyer2000 Web site with a dot-com rather than the proper dot-org suffix. The URL led directly into the cyber arms of her opponent: It opened the Web site of fellow Republican William Meub, whom she will face in a primary this September.

Summers immediately fingered Meub as the culprit and fired off a snide, accusatory e-mail. "Glad to see you bought one of our sites, hope it shows up on the campaign finance report." Meub campaign manager mounted a high horse and shot back: "I find your insinuation that Bill's campaign was somehow involved with what is going on with your Web site/domain name offensive and not productive. Ruth and you appear to be shooting from the hip without proper investigation ... I hope you get to the source of your problem."

It didn't take long for everyone to figure out that the source was Scott Loughrey, a Baltimore cybersquatter. But Summers still refuses to admit that she made a mistake. "We don't owe them an apology. We may not be able to find a paper trail to prove Bill [Meub] had anything to do with it, [but] it's easy to hide things. Since he is a fellow Republican, we have to give him benefit of doubt."

Last Monday night, Loughrey escalated his tactics by posting a Web page for Dwyer, that -- rather than redirecting her supporters -- informs them about some of her less-than-proud moments, like the time she accused Democratic Gov. Howard Dean of thuggish and illegal tactics. "The governor," she charged, "is very willing to threaten people, bribe people ... anything he can do to get a vote." When challenged, Dwyer failed to come up with any proof but refused to apologize.

Her critics note a similar lack of fair play in the quick accusations against Meub. According to Summers, the Dwyer campaign had known for months that Loughrey owned the site. When Summers first came on board, she and Dwyer discussed his offer to sell them the dot-com address and turned it down. "In a weak moment" of greed, said Loughrey, "I asked for $2,000." A local Vermont paper reported that after putting up his spoof site last week Dwyer was willing to pay up to $1,000 for the domain. Loughrey says he has not been contacted by the Dwyer campaign and has not decided whether he will sell.

But such moments may not be all that rare for Loughrey. Previously, he tried to sell the Wise2000 dot-com and dot-org domain names to Bob Wise, a candidate for governor in West Virginia. When Wise declined, Loughrey unsuccessfully hawked the names to Wise's opponent, and then put them up for auction on eBay.

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